


Ineffable Rivalry

by cyankelpie



Series: Ineffable Rivalry [1]
Category: Good Omens (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe, Bees?, Enemies to Friends, Gabriel and Beelzebub stationed on Earth, Gen, Moral Ambiguity, Nonbinary Beelzebub (Good Omens), Rivalry, Thwarting
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-08-13
Updated: 2019-09-17
Packaged: 2020-08-20 23:03:11
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 15
Words: 37,220
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/20235832
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/cyankelpie/pseuds/cyankelpie
Summary: Gabriel, the guardian of the Eastern Gate, and Beelzebub, the fly of Eden, get off on exactly the wrong foot when they meet in the garden, kicking off a six-thousand-year competition of thwarting and counter-thwarting. Hijinks ensue.





	1. 4004 B.C., Eden

**Author's Note:**

> So I was curious what might happen if everyone's second-favorite angel and demon got stuck on Earth instead and the next thing I knew I was writing a multi-chaptered fic. Hopefully the characterization isn't too out of wack.

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel meets a demon and is not amused. Beelzebub is, though.

The sun was setting on Eden, both literally and figuratively. Gabriel resisted the urge to sneak a look at the sunset behind him. It was all fine getting stationed at the Eastern Gate—he did get to watch the sun rise, after all—but the sunsets always seemed more vibrant. More reds and purples. And this would be the last one, or at least the last perfect one. Surely one look couldn’t hurt—but that was the sort of thinking that got the humans cast out, wasn’t it? _It’s just a fruit, it’s just one bite, what could it matter?_ Instead, he squared his shoulders and looked out on the storm clouds gathering in front of him. He wasn’t sure what they meant, but he didn’t like the look of them at all. They were inching closer.

He heard the demon before he saw them. A thousand buzzing insects rose in a swarm from the garden. As Gabriel turned to look, they swirled into a column at the top of the wall and coalesced into a humanoid shape. Charred black wings unfolded to match the frizzled mass of black hair on the demon’s head. They looked down at the humans with no expression at all, hands folded behind their back. They were shorter than Gabriel had expected.

“Stay back, demon,” said Gabriel, drawing his sword. Flames blazed to life along its edge.

The demon tilted their head back to look at him in a bored way. “What are you still doing here?”

“What am I—” Gabriel stuttered. “This is my post. What are you doing here?”

“You’re not going to watch the sunset with the otherzzz?” The way the demon buzzed on the last _s_ set Gabriel’s teeth on edge. “They’re all on the Western wall.”

Gabriel barked a laugh. “As if I’d trust the word of a demon. You’re the one who tempted the humans, aren’t you? All of this is your fault.” He gestured at the empty garden behind him, the storm clouds ahead, the humans making their way across the desert.

The demon sighed, bored and disinterested. “I didn’t have to lie to do that.” They turned to look West. “You can’t blame them for leaving their posts. It’s beautiful, and there won’t be another one like it for a very long time.” They tossed Gabriel another sidelong glance. “It’s not as if guarding the gates matters now that I’ve already broken in.”

“Shut your treacherous mouth,” Gabriel snapped, raising his sword and resisting the urge to turn around. “Begone, or I will smite you where you stand.”

“Zzzzzmite me?” the demon repeated. “Why? I haven’t touched you. I’m an innocent fly.”

He squared his feet. “No such thing as an innocent demon.”

The demon turned to face Gabriel. Short as they were, there was a certain power in their flat carelessness behind their eyes. They knew it, too. Slowly, they stepped toward Gabriel, hands still behind their back. “If you were going to kill me you should have done it thizzzz morning,” they said, tilting their head. “I flew right past here, you know. Nobody noticed one little fly.”

Gabriel’s arms tensed. “I’m warning you, demon, if you take one more step—”

They did. Gabriel took a step back.

He froze, looking down at the traitorous foot. He should have leapt at the chance to kill a demon, and none were more deserving of it than this insect here. This was the enemy. He was meant to guard the eastern gate. It was his job. It was his purpose. But—

But this demon scared him. Gabriel had fought demons before in the Rebellion, of course. They had rushed at him, screaming, wielding blades of fire and claws of ice, and he had answered with equal fury. They’d never walked straight towards him, armed with nothing, shielded only with reckless indifference. He didn’t know how to counter that.

The demon had stopped. They, too were looking at Gabriel’s foot. When their eyes flicked back up, they smirked.

Gabriel’s face burned. Even if he killed the demon now, he had already lost. But that didn’t mean it wouldn’t feel good.

A roar from across the desert pulled his attention away. An enormous lion was stalking towards the humans, teeth bared, crouching to spring. Adam pushed eve behind himself, shouting something Gabriel didn’t catch. She ran. Adam backed away more slowly, still facing the lion, raising his hands as if that could fend the beast off.

“They seem to be having some trouble,” said the demon airily. “It would be a real shame if they were to die now, on top of everything else.”

Gabriel’s grip tightened on the flaming sword. Killing the demon would have to wait. With as much spite as he could muster, Gabriel leapt off the wall, spread his wings, and soared towards the humans.

Beelzebub watched him go with satisfaction. They had pushed a little too far, they knew. The angel very easily could have swung that sword, and from the look on his face, he had been on the verge of doing it. They had only gotten lucky that the lion came along when it did. They really shouldn’t have risked it.

They just hadn’t been able to resist. There was something about the angel that begged to be challenged, to be broken over someone’s knee like a tree branch. The way he had stood so smugly there on the wall, looking down on all the rest of creation, had made Beelzebub’s hands clench. Someone had to take him down a peg or two.

They just hadn’t expected it to feel so good. That one step backwards, that flash of panic across that stupid rectangular face—such a tiny accomplishment, but sweeter than any kill.

Most demons didn’t put much value on symbolic victories. They preferred actual victories instead, preferably of the messiest sort, all blood and agony and screaming. But the hosts of heaven thought differently, Beelzebub knew. “We’ve got to hit Her where it hurts,” Beelzebub had argued while the others tossed around ideas, most of which involved burning trees, salting the earth, and painting the garden walls a very particular shade of red. “Right in the ideology.”

But it had been too easy. I mean, the tree was right there. Beelzebub couldn’t shake the feeling that they had played right into Her hands, as always.

Across the desert, the lion leapt, and a flaming sword flashed. The angel turned to the humans, who huddled back against the sand and stared at him in awe. Beelzebub shrank back into a single, buzzing fly and made themselves scarce. By the time the angel looked back up to the walls, they were gone.


	2. 3004 B.C., Mesopotamia

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel sees a wile. He thwarts.

Noah was hardly a master shipbuilder. He had been given very clear instructions, which he had of course followed to the letter, and the ark would get the job done. It was roomy enough to hold his family and the menagerie he planned to bring along with him, and would hold water for as long as it needed to, so long as it didn’t bump into any rocks or mountains. But his technique was a bit lacking. If, say, a demon went poking around with a crowbar, they were bound to find some weak points where the boards could easily be cracked apart.

Beelzebub was currently that demon, though they didn’t want to be. It had been their idea, just like all of hell’s most brilliant initiatives (in their opinion, anyway). The idea was to put the Almighty in the awkward position of having to choose between drowning Her favorite mortal family, or calling off the flood altogether. Both would be embarrassing, but embarrassing the Almighty had so far proven extremely difficult, as it was bound to when you were dealing with an opponent that was always an infinite number of steps ahead, wouldn’t tell anyone the rules of the game, and kept changing them just in case anyone did happen to figure them out. To be honest, Beelzebub didn’t really expect this particular initiative to pan out, and had resolved to stop proposing ideas like this if it didn’t. They had tried to distance themselves from this mission for just that reason. Since they had been the one assigned to it, it clearly hadn’t worked.

Beelzebub hacked away at the seams between two boards and sighed. They weren’t made for grunt work. They had always pictured themselves in more of a managerial role. It wasn’t their fault that they just hadn’t been in quite the right place when the hierarchy of hell was established. Though, Dagon had hinted, advancement wasn’t out of the question. If Beelzebub worked themselves raw and built up a truly abysmal record (which was to say, an outstanding one), they might be looking at a promotion sometime in the next two or three millennia. It hardly seemed worth the effort, though, even if their superiors didn’t change their mind by that time.

The board they were working at came loose. They jimmied the crowbar into the crack and grunted as they pried it away. The wood splintered. They hacked at it a little more and opened up a decent-sized hole.

Someone was looking at them. Beelzebub glanced to the side, expecting one of Noah’s family members, and readied a miracle with which to wipe the human’s memory.

The angel from the garden was standing there, “Demon,” he said haughtily.

Beelzebub looked at him for a moment, then shook their head and turned back to their work. He really wasn’t worth wasting words on. They had work to do.

“I thought I smelled something rotten,” said the angel, stepping towards them with slow menace. “Trying to sabotage the Great Plan, are we?”

Beelzebub cast him another expressionless glance. The angel made a point of standing over them and looking down. Physical intimidation. Probably trying to compensate for his slip-up during their last encounter. Well, he had picked the wrong demon to try that on. Beelzebub might not be very strong physically, but made up for it with their cold stare and complete impassivity. “So what are you going to do?” they asked flatly. “No flaming sword this time.”

“I could take that crowbar from you and put a dent in your skull,” said the angel.

Before he could try, the demon tossed the crowbar over their shoulder. It sailed down half the length of the ark before landing in a cloud of dust. “What crowbar?”

The angel gave a huff of annoyance. “Regardless, your machinations end here.” He snapped his fingers. The boards where Beelzebub had been working bent and shifted back into place.

Beelzebub looked at the space where the hole had been, then turned to the angel with a bored sigh. “You know I can juzzzt…” They threw up a hand and snapped their fingers. The wood splintered and came back apart.

The angel blinked stupidly for a second, then cleared his throat. He snapped his fingers again, and the boat fixed itself. “Nice try. This boat, and this family, are under my protection.

“Protect them, then.” Beelzebub snapped again to re-open the hole. Outsmarting the angel was so easy that it had almost lost its appeal. Almost.

Gabriel drew himself up to his full height to tower even further over the demon. _Snap._

Beelzebub looked coldly back, unimpressed. Without breaking eye contact, they raised their hand again. _Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap. _The angel made a noise that might have been a nervous laugh. “We can’t keep doing this forever.”

“Speak for yourself.” _Snap._

_Snap._ “You’ll run out of miracles eventually.”

“So will you.” _Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap._

“Stop that,” the angel hissed. The sight of him losing his cool brought a smirk to Beelzebub’s face. _Snap._ “Would you stop—”

Beelzebub didn’t say anything. _Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap._

_Snap._

“Okay.” The angel held up both hands. “Okay, you know what? Let’s call a truce for now, or we’ll be here for hours. We can sort this out just before the flooding starts. Sudden death. What do you say?”

Beelzebub considered for a moment, eyeing the hole in the boat. “Fine.”

“Good.”

They stood there for a moment in uncomfortable silence. Beelzebub looked out across the desert, then turned back, just in case the angel might have left. He hadn’t. “Are you just going to stand there?”

“Well, I’m not going to leave you to your own devices, demon.”

Beelzebub shook their head. “Can you really not think of a better insult?”

“Insect,” the angel spat.

They shrugged. “Eh.”

“Wait a minute.” The angel tensed, looking off into the desert. He pointed. “Wait a minute. What’s that?”

Beelzebub just looked at him. This was just sad. “I’m not going to turn around.”

The angel’s lips pressed into a hard line. He leaned back onto his heels, turned away, then whirled back and snapped his fingers.

“You cheated,” Beelzebub pointed out. _Snap. _“Hardly virtuous.”

“Well, you’re trying to drown Noah’s family.” _Snap._

“What does it matter?” _Snap. _“God’s going to drown everyone else. You don’t see any of your lot trying to stop Her.”

“It’s—well, it’s—it’s Her plan.” _Snap. _“It’s not my place to understand, or yours. I’m just here to bring it about.”

They sighed and rolled their eyes. _Snap._ They almost felt sorry for the angels sometimes. They were so stupid, so blindly loyal. Hearing them say things like that was enough to make them glad they had fallen.

“Do not mock the Great Plan, demon,” the angel said seriously. _Snap._

“I didn’t say anything.” _Snap._ “Maybe you just heard the voices in your head.”

The angel’s face turned red. He raised both hands and started snapping with both of them in quick succession.

“Really?” Beelzebub sighed, but raised their other hand and matched the angel’s speed. Dishing out miracles that fast wasn’t easy, but that didn’t mean they couldn’t do it.

A cold drop hit them on the wrist, and when they looked up, another hit their cheek. “Aha!” said the angel, grinning. “You’re running out of time.”

“And I expect you’re running out of miracles.” Beelzebub had carefully rationed their allotment of miracles for this month. They were always given more than was usually necessary, of course, but one never knew when dire need might arise. Like now, for instance. _Snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap-snap—_

Thunder boomed above them, and the drizzle turned into a downpour. Both of them kept snapping at their frenzied pace. “You’re looking tired,” said the angel, wiping a sheen of sweat from his own forehead. He smiled, but his teeth were clenched in a way which suggested he was getting nervous.

Beelzebub wondered how many miracles they had left. They must have tossed out at least a hundred by now. They’d be running thin soon. A bit of anxiety crept into their mind. They had been betting on the angel running out first, and that should have happened by now. But Beelzebub had been so frugal. They doubted the angel could say the same. Surely he would run out any second now. They swallowed. Any second…

Beelzebub snapped, and felt the last miracle leave them. They froze and looked down at their fingers.

“All out of tricks, hm?” The angel bent down to their level. “I’m impressed. I didn’t think it would take that long.”

Beelzebub blinked and looked at the angel without comprehending. They turned to the hole in the boat. How did he have so many miracles to spare? Had he specially requested a surplus from heaven? He didn’t seem the type to plan that far ahead.

“Here’s a little hint,” said the angel, with the most condescending smile Beelzebub had ever seen. He snapped, and the hole patched itself up. “Next time, keep your eyes on the actual goal. Not on your opponent.”

The demon’s eyes widened in cold fury as they pressed their lips into a hard line. The angel hadn’t even needed to use miracles. He was just snapping.

The rain was coming down in sheets now. Both of them were soaked. “I suggest you find something to hold onto,” said the angel. “This boat here will do the job, but you’ll be stuck inside for quite a while.”

Beelzebub glared at him with rage, trying not to shiver from the rain. “I can still sink it from the inside.”

“And discorporate yourself?” the angel laughed. “You really want to show up downstairs, out of miracles and missing a body—ooh, that’s embarassing—and drown in paperwork?”

Beelzebub couldn’t keep a flicker of fear out of their face. That was a formidable thought.

“Good luck.” The angel squinted in another tight, condescending smile. “And stay dry.” He snapped one more time, and vanished.

Beelzebub stood there a moment, letting the rain soak them. The water swirled past their ankles. It was rising far too rapidly for their taste. They cursed, and looked up at the boat towering over them. It wouldn’t be easy to climb, but what choice did they have?

They grabbed onto the keel at the back of the boat and, gritting their teeth with effort, began to climb. Well, that…that had not gone how they had expected. They had been too focused on beating the angel that they had gotten careless. And the angel knew it. He had used it to his advantage. He had even pretended to get angry to spur Beelzebub on. It was…it was…

It was genius, actually. Beelzebub paused, halfway up the side of the ark, tilting their head in thought. It seemed they had underestimated the angel. Well, that was interesting.


	3. 2067 B.C., Canaan

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sandalphon gets carried away with what should have been a simple smiting, and Gabriel has no patience for it. Beelzebub tries their hand at thwarting.

Gabriel leaned close to the five-foot chalky pillar and grimaced. Hesitantly, he poked it with his index finger. It crumbled into white powder. “Sandalphon—” The angel sighed, rubbed the bridge of his nose, and turned to his associate with barely-contained exasperation. “Was this really necessary?”

“You did tell them not to turn around.” Sandalphon pointed out. He looked far too proud of himself for someone who had just made a complete mess out of a perfectly simple assignment.

Gabriel gave a tight, impatient smile, his teeth gritted. “I really meant that more, you know, metaphorically.” He glanced with distaste at the pile of salt and stepped away, kicking it out of his sandals.

“Pity,” said Sandalphon, though he didn’t seem to mean it much. “She was quite a nice woman. Shouldn’t have looked back.”

Gabriel’s entire face gathered up as he fought the impulse to yell at his associate. It was Sandalphon’s first major assignment. He couldn’t be blamed for going overboard. Though, Gabriel thought with a glance at the cities still burning behind them, it had been _really_ overboard.

“Wait a moment.” Sandalphon’s proud smile faded. He sniffed the air, then turned to the burning cities. “There’s something in there,” he said, pointing to the nearest one. “Something…evil.”

Gabriel refused to believe that Sandalphon could actually smell that, but this wasn’t the time to argue about it. “Okay, you know what?” he said, forcing the same exasperated smile. “You stay here while I go investigate. _Stay here_. And don’t go smiting anyone else.” Not that there was anyone left. Sandalphon had made sure of that.

Gabriel turned and walked into the city before he lost his last shred of patience. He wasn’t looking forward to telling head office about this fiasco. This should have been a feather in his cap, a vote in his favor when head office started considering promotions. He had planned to keep the damage to a minimum. A neat, clean smiting. Gabriel’s nose wrinkled in distaste as the wind blew a gust of smoke and sulfur his way. Instead, Sandalphon had seen fit to set the entire plain on fire.

Flames licked at Gabriel’s robes as he crossed through the smoldering city gates, but they didn’t dare actually burn him. The streets glowed orange. Salt shone in the roads, flickering in the firelight. Nothing would be growing here for a long while. Sandalphon was right about one thing, though. Gabriel paused in the middle of a road, frowned, and turned to look down a side road. There was a presence here. And it certainly wasn’t human.

A small black figure with a familiar mass of black hair leaned against the still-standing half of a broken archway. “Oh, not you again,” Gabriel burst out.

The demon looked up, their expression flat as ever. “It’zzz Gabriel, isn’t it?”

Gabriel paused, wary. “Why would it matter to you?”

“If we’re going to keep running into each other, we might as well make introductions.” They stepped closer and held out a hand. “Beelzebub.”

“I would not touch your maggot-ridden hand if I were falling into the bottomless pit and it was the only thing to grab onto,” Gabriel spat. “What are you doing here?”

Beelzebub’s eyebrows rose just a fraction. They sighed and withdrew their hand. “These are supposed to be my people, aren’t they? Sinners, and the like.”

Gabriel looked around at the little piles of salt Sandalphon had left behind. “They’re all dead.”

“Not all,” said Beelzebub. “A few escaped to the mountains earlier today.”

“With your help, I assume,” Gabriel muttered, scowling. Naturally, the demon had to find a way to get in the way of even a simple smiting. “How did you convince them to go? Even Lot’s sons-in-law didn’t believe—”

“I never said they went willingly.” Beelzebub looked pointedly around at the flames. “You’ve made even more of a mess than I expected. Aren’t your side supposed to be the nice ones?”

“It was well-deserved,” said Gabriel, straightening again. “Ten righteous people, that was the deal. It was more than fair, I think. We couldn’t even find ten.”

Beelzebub nodded in apparent agreement. “You were doing the judging? You must have looked very hard, then.”

Gabriel’s teeth clenched. They really had a chance to look much at all. Sandalphon had unleashed the fire and brimstone at the first available opportunity. From the irony in the demon’s voice, they knew that the angels hadn’t exactly scoured the land before destroying it. “So how did you choose which ones to save, if you’re such an expert on judgment?” asked Gabriel, turning the conversation away from himself.

“Oh, all the worst sort,” said Beelzebub. “Criminals, murderers, rapists…”

Gabriel leaned back with a humorless laugh. “Okay, wow. You do not have the moral high ground here.”

“I should hope not. I’m a demon,” said Beelzebub. “But you’re not so perfect either. Wrath is a sin, you know.”

“And mercy is a virtue,” Gabriel shot back. To his satisfaction, the demon’s permanent scowl deepened. “I’m not here alone, you know. My associate is nearby. You’re no match for both of us.” He took a step toward the Demon, drawing himself up to his full height. “You’re probably not even a match for me alone.”

“Are you going to discorporate me?” They sounded amused by the idea. “With what, your bare hands?”

“I could,” said Gabriel.

“Do it, then.”

They always knew how to catch him off guard. “What?”

Beelzebub stepped towards him, and he suppressed the impulse to back away. “I zzzzzaid,” they buzzed, looking up with those flat, cold eyes. “Do it.”

It really wouldn’t be hard. All he’d have to do was grab the demon by the throat and squeeze. Maybe he could even snap their neck. He’d never done it before, but how tough could human bones be? And then there’d be one less demon on Earth, at least until they got a new body. Plus, Gabriel wouldn’t have to deal with them for a while. It was the only right thing to do, really.

Beelzebub stood there waiting. Gabriel had assumed they were calling his bluff, but there was no trace of amusement or mockery in their face. He raised his hands to reach for their throat. The demon didn’t move. Surely they were taunting him. Surely it hadn’t been an actual request.

“What is _wrong_ with you?” he demanded. His hands dropped back to his sides.

“I’m a demon,” said Beelzebub, spreading their arms and stepping backwards. “What’zzz your excuse?”

This was the third time now that he had failed to kill this annoying little fly. They always seemed to be trying to goad him into it, and the last thing he wanted was to give them the satisfaction. Even when he knew it was the right thing to do. How did they always manage to get inside his head like this?

“If that’zzzz all,” the demon buzzed, “I’ll be on my way. Until we meet again, Gabe.”

Gabriel fought back a cringe at the too-friendly nickname. “Pray that we don’t, demon.”

“Pray?” they repeated sarcastically, turning to leave. “You didn’t think through that one at all, did you?”

Gabriel couldn’t think of a retort before Beelzebub passed under the half-arch, and the second half crumbled behind them. He groaned in frustration. It had been a bad enough day already without running into the demon again. And now he had to report the smitings to his superiors. He rubbed his eyes. He just did not have the patience for this right now.

“Tell you what,” he said with another tight smile when he rejoined Sandalphon. “Why don’t _you_ file the report on this?”

“Me?” Sandalphon glanced up in the act of arranging the salt into a summoning circle to return them to heaven. He looked both bewildered and delighted. “But…I’ve really never done anything like this before.”

“You’ve filed reports, haven’t you?” said Gabriel, impatiently. He wondered vaguely if being stuck with the inexperienced, overzealous angel was a punishment for something he wasn’t aware of. “It’s the same process.”

Sandalphon nodded excitedly. “I’ll just run it by you after I’ve—”

“No need,” said Gabriel hurriedly. “I’m sure you’ll do fine.” And if he didn’t, they really couldn’t blame Gabriel for it. He just wasn’t in the mood to read a summary of today’s disaster. He’d prefer to pretend it never happened.

Besides, the less he was involved in the report, the better. His superiors would be less than pleased if they found out about the people that the demon had saved. If he had written the report himself and left it out, there might be some issues. Even simple omission could be called lying. But it wasn’t really lying if the report was written by someone who didn’t know about it, was it? And, if Sandalphon turned in the report without consulting him, he couldn’t be blamed if a few details had been left out.

And anyway, Gabriel could handle the demon himself. There was really no need to involve anyone else.


	4. 424 B.C., Olympia, Greece

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The Olympics are a time for peace, but also a time for competition. This applies to angels and demons as well.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Consistent chapter lengths? What's that?
> 
> The tricky thing about writing anything historical is that I like writing more than I like researching, so I apologize for the many, many anachronisms that probably show up from this point forward.

Gabriel wiped the sweat from his face and beamed, waving at the crowds with both arms. His legs felt like they might burst into flame and collapse underneath him. It would have been easy to quench the exhaustion, but he held onto it, savoring it. That was the burn of strength in his limbs. The fire of victory. In his opinion, there was no better feeling.

The olive wreath sat on his head like a shining halo. Gabriel didn’t think he had ever felt as good as he did now, standing in the sun while they chanted his name. The invention of sports had been an uncharacteristic stroke of brilliance on the part of humanity. Pushing the limits of their bodies and spirits, striving for greatness and achieving something great with the frail physical forms they had been given—What could be more inspiring? What could be more worth celebrating?

Gabriel’s ecstasy deflated a little when he saw the faces of the other runners. A few shot him sullen looks. Most of the rest seemed to be trying very hard not to. That was no good. As an angel, he was supposed to discourage jealousy, not provoke it. He gave them what he hoped came out as a benevolent smile. “Congratulations to you as well, friends. You have all run well, and proven your mettle. You should be proud.”

His words had little effect. Gabriel had never been very good at injecting warmth into his smile and voice. He clapped his hands together and tried a different tactic. “You know what, why don’t we all go celebrate? Wine is on me.”

They brightened at once, and looked at Gabriel much more amiably as they got dressed and headed to the nearby restaurant. The owner, seeing the olive crown on Gabriel’s head nodded to him in respect as he entered. Almost immediately, the runners split up into factions by their home city-states. Gabriel ended up at a table with two other Athenians whose names he couldn’t remember, trying to deflect the wine and food that they kept trying to push his way. Eating and drinking disgusted him, and he wasn’t going to start now if he could help it. Perhaps this had been a mistake. He didn’t have much to do now except sit around and wait to pay everyone else’s bills. He glanced around. It had only been a few minutes, but somehow every single one of them already had a glass in their hand. Occasionally, they would point at Gabriel to make sure the servers knew who they should charge.

A splotch of black in the corner caught his eye, and what was left of his smile faded. Beelzebub was here.

The other runners at his table were having an utterly uninteresting conversation about olives, and current market prices. Gabriel hadn't bothered listening, but the sound of his own name caught his attention. “Hey, Gabriel. Do you know her?”

“Hm?” Gabriel glanced back at the other runners, then glanced around. “Do I know who?”

“That Spartan woman over there, in the black.”

It took a moment for him to realize that he was talking about the demon. He forgot sometimes how binary-minded humans could be. “Oh, her? No, I’ve never seen her before in my life.” He gave a too-forceful laugh. “Why would I know a Spartan?”

The runner shrugged. “S’just, you were looking at her like you knew her.”

“Is she a Spartan?” asked the other, frowning over at Beelzebub. “Doesn’t look like one.”

“She’s wearing their fashion,” said the other. “Though, now you mention it, she doesn’t have the features…”

“I don’t know her,” Gabriel hissed through his teeth, his face fixed in a tight smile. “Stop looking. They’ll—She’ll notice.”

So far, they hadn’t. They were much too occupied with the pomegranate in front of them. Red juice stained their fingers as they pulled the little globular seeds from the yellow flesh. Gabriel shuddered and turned away, his skin crawling. Coming into a restaurant was definitely a mistake.

Well, as long as the demon didn’t notice him, either, he could still enjoy his hour of victory. He reached up to make sure the olive crown sat straight on his head and basked in its light. While the other two Athenians talked, he relived the race. The pounding of his feet in time to his breathing. The burn of effort in his limbs. The rush of energy that always came with the act of running itself.

He glanced again at the demon, just to make sure they hadn’t seen him. What were they doing here? The Olympics were a time of peace and friendly competition, hardly where he would expect to find a demon. He squinted, tapping his chin thoughtfully. They were up to something. He had to find out what.

No, he was letting them get inside his head again, and they hadn’t even done anything yet. That was one thing he couldn’t stand. Well, Gabriel could play mind games too. And this time, he had the first move.

He waved to get the attention of the serving boy. “Could you send a glass of your worst wine to that table?” he said quietly, with a nod at the demon. “And tell them who sent it.”

He seemed confused. “Our…our _worst_ wine?”

“Your absolute worst,” said Gabriel, with a conspiratorial grin. “Rotten, if you have it.”

The boy laughed nervously, glancing between him and the demon in the corner. “I don’t think I can—”

“If you would be so kind,” Gabriel added, letting a bit of command seep into his voice. Not enough to actually compel the human against his will, of course. Gabriel definitely wasn’t allowed to do that. Just enough to convince him.

The boy gave a flustered little nod and went away. Gabriel grinned, tapped his fingers on the table, and waited to see how they would react. This would be fun.

Beelzebub picked apart the pomegranate with methodical care. It was oddly satisfying to eat something that made you work for it. Like artichokes, or shellfish, or even oranges. But pomegranates were their favorite. It was the simple pleasures in life, like the sweetness of fruit, that kept Beelzebub going. To be fair, though, simple pleasures often seemed the only ones available to them.

A glass clinked down in front of them, and they stopped what they were doing. It was full of something that might once have been wine. The serving boy gave Beelzebub a half-apologetic, half-terrified look. “From that gentleman over there,” he said hurriedly, stepping back behind the table. “The champion.”

Across the restaurant, Gabriel waved and flashed a smile. Beelzebub’s face hardened into a glare. The idiot was even wearing laurels. They wondered if he had actually won them, or if they were just for the sake of superiority. Without breaking eye contact, they lifted the glass to their lips and drained the rust-colored liquid in one long sip. It tasted of vinegar and rotten strawberries. They didn’t flinch.

Wiping their juice-stained fingers on their long black tunic, they stood and stalked over to Gabriel. “Gabe,” they said, trying to mirror the angel’s own empty smile. Even without a mirror, they knew it was only a pale imitation. Gabriel had elevated fake smiles to an art form.

He was sitting with two other men, one of whom looked at Beelzebub and then raised their eyebrows at Gabriel. “I thought you didn’t know—”

“You two,” Beelzebub snapped at them. “Leave. Now.”

They did so without another word. Beelzebub half-sat, half-fell into the chair opposite Gabriel and stared at him coldly, waiting for him to speak.

“Now, demon, there’s no need to look so hostile,” said Gabriel. “The whole city’s under truce, remember? I think that applies to you and I as well.”

Beelzebub tilted their head without changing their expression. “What are you doing here? Besides cheating another mortal out of the glory they should have rightfully won,” they added, eyes flicking up to the olive wreath on Gabriel’s head.

“Cheating? I earned this.” Gabriel pointed at the olive crown. “I didn’t use my powers. I trained for it.”

“I’m sure you were the only one. Congratulationzzzz,” said Beelzebub in their flattest and most sarcastic voice. “You, boy,” they barked at the serving boy. “That wine I just had. Bring us the rest of the bottle.”

He looked terrified. “The rest of…?”

“Now, boy. We’re celebrating here.”

He left with a little squeak.

“And what do your people think of your escapades here?” Beelzebub asked. “Competing in a tournament to honor a pagan god?” Gabriel’s smile faltered, and Beelzebub smirked. “They don’t know you’re here, do they?”

“They are…very much in favor of the Olympics,” he said, with the slow deliberation of someone who starts a sentence without a plan for how to end it. “This is a time of peace. An opportunity for the city-states to come together, and…”

“That’s not why you’re here,” Beelzebub scoffed. “You just want to show off in the arena.”

Gabriel turned red. His hand twitched like he was about to snatch the olive crown off his head, but he held himself back. “And what about yourself? I can’t imagine this is rife ground for demonic acts.”

“You’d be surprizzzed.” Unfortunately, though, Gabriel was right. The Greeks could be annoyingly pious, especially here in the shadow of that ostentatious temple to Zeus. Tempting the athletes to cheat and bribe their way to victory was more difficult than Beelzebub had expected. The majority of them feared being struck down by lightning more than they wanted glory. That wasn’t to say they hadn’t had some success, but the more of them got caught, the harder it was to tempt the rest of them.

The serving boy brought the bottle of the stuff Beelzebub had incorrectly referred to as wine, set down two glasses, and then left as fast as he could. “Speaking of peace,” said Beelzebub, filling both glasses, “isn’t the truce is a bit strained right now?”

Gabriel’s eyes widened. “You’re not…you’re not trying to bring the war here, surely?” He glanced around, as if he expected several armies to come marching into the restaurant and start fighting each other.

They shrugged. “It’s already here. War’s just another competition, after all.” They shook their head. “One of yesterday’s wrestling matches turned nasty, I hear.”

“I did hear about that,” muttered Gabriel, frowning at the table. “Poor guy had his eyes gouged.”

Beelzebub raised their glass. “To peace,” they said dryly.

Gabriel glanced at the glasses, then looked away uncomfortably. Beelzebub shrugged, fixed the bad wine with a careless wave, and took a long drink. Even unspoiled, the wine wasn’t good.

“The war won’t last much longer,” said Gabriel.

“Who knows?” said Beelzebub, setting their glass down. “They are pretty evenly matched. Though I suppose it’s only a matter of time before Sparta’s crushed.

When they looked up, Gabriel was squinting at them in bewilderment. “Athens,” he said. “You mean until Athens is crushed.”

“With their navy, and all their allies?” Beelzebub scoffed. “Unlikely.”

Gabriel stared. “You’re rooting for _Athens_?”

“Obviously.” Beelzebub looked at Gabriel cautiously. “Why? Don’t tell me you’re—”

“Also Athens.”

Beelzebub blinked and set down their glass. For a moment, they couldn’t think of anything to say. “You’re joking.”

“But you’re dressed as a Spartan!” Gabriel burst out.

“So? I’ve been swapping sides all day!” Beelzebub burst out, forgetting their composure. “And what about you? You’re rooting for the wrong side now?”

“Sparta is the wrong side!” Gabriel jabbed his index finger into the table to emphasize his point. “They’re so warlike and violent—”

“Their armies protect all of Greece,” said Beelzebub.

“The Peloponnesian league attacked first!”

“Maybe if Athens hadn’t gotten so imperialistic—”

“Have you even been to Athens?” asked Gabriel. “All that art, culture, philosophy—”

“And have you seen how they treat women there?” asked Beelzebub. “No you haven’t, because they’re barely allowed outside. If that’s not evil, I don’t know what is.”

“No,” Gabriel insisted, “The Spartans forcing people into their army, _that’s_ evil.”

“Maybe they wouldn’t need to do that if all of Greece didn’t depend on them for defense.” They glanced around and lowered their voice. Both of them had raised their voices, and people were starting to stare.

Gabriel sat back in his chair, folded his arms, and looked stormily across at Beelzebub. “Well, one of us is going to have to change sides.”

“It’s not going to be me,” said Beelzebub. “What would upstairs say, if they found out you’d been supporting the wrong side?”

“Sparta _is_ the wrong side,” said Gabriel with an amount of confidence that he could not possibly feel. “Picking the wrong side of a war, why would I do that? Only an idiot—”

“My point exactly.”

“Glad we agree,” said Gabriel, then caught himself. “I meant _you_.”

With a sigh, Beelzebub refilled their glass, fixed the spoiled wine with a flick of their fingers, and improved its taste with another. “To Sparta, hm?” They raised their glass, now a rich and vibrant red. “The _right_ side.”

Again, Gabriel cast an uncomfortable glance at the glass, and then looked away. Beelzebub paused, with the glass halfway to their mouth. If it was the taste that Gabriel objected to, he could very easily have miracle himself up some better wine. “You don’t drink.”

He looked sharply at Beelzebub, then shook his head.

Beelzebub sipped the newly-improved wine. It was smooth and sweet, just how they liked it. There were so few things in this world worth enjoying. It seemed stupid to deprive yourself of one of them. “Do you eat?” They asked, tilting their head curiously.

“No,” said Gabriel in that self-important way, “I do not…_ingest_…anything of this world.”

Interesting. Watching the angel closely, Beelzebub took another sip of the wine, slurping just a little. Gabriel’s facial muscles flinched just slightly.

“Boy.” Beelzebub set down their glass and waved the serving boy over. “Bring us some bread and cheese, those lentils with the olives and garlic, and a bowl of dates. With honey, if you’ve got it.” Panic flashed across Gabriel’s face. “Oh, and two more pomegranates, I think,” Beelzebub added, staring straight at him. “Whole. With the seeds in.”

Gabriel waved his hands frantically. “Don’t bring us any of that.”

“Ignore him,” Beelzebub droned. “Run along, boy. We’re hungry.”

The boy looked on the verge of tears. He nodded and fled back to the kitchen.

Gabriel’s face was stony, but his eyes burned as he glared at Beelzebub. They met his gaze with indifference. Then, slowly, Gabriel leaned back in his chair. His lips stretched back over his teeth in a smile. “Do you remember Sodom and Gomorrah?”

Beelzebub tried not to show how unsettled they were by this sudden change in attitude and conversation matter. “Hard to forget. You really went overboard.”

“That was my associate, not me,” Gabriel hissed, his smile momentarily vanishing. He pulled himself together a moment later. “You remember those people you pulled out of the city?”

Beelzebub sighed impatiently. “Out with it.”

“I tracked them down.” Gabriel bared his teeth in a particularly vicious version of his signature cold smile. “Funny story. Their near-death experiences gave them a different outlook on life. A little nudge in the right direction, and every last one of them changed their ways.”

Beelzebub’s scowl deepened. They tasted something bitter that had nothing to do with the wine. “Bastard.”

Gabriel’s violet eyes glinted with satisfaction. “It really is remarkable how She always manages to turn these things around, don’t you think?”

“Shut it,” they hissed, slamming their palm onto the table before they could stop themselves. Beelzebub couldn’t stand being a pawn. That was supposed to have ended with the Rebellion. Even now, after everything, someone else was always pulling the strings.

Their hand curled into a fist. No, that wasn’t what this was. This had nothing to do with Her, or with the Adversary. Gabriel was just being a prick.

They had lost control. They needed to stay in control. It was probably the wine. Shutting their eyes for a moment, they purged what little alcohol they had drunk from their bloodstream, then opened their eyes to look at Gabriel with their usual apathetic stare. “Your people must have been so proud,” they said dully.

Gabriel frowned, and a crease appeared between his eyes. As Beelzebub had expected, he hadn’t told them about it. How could he? That would require him to admit to the existence of loose ends after what he had probably claimed was a very thorough smiting.

The serving boy returned and set down two plates, each with a quartered pomegranate, and a bowl of lentils. “I-I’ll bring the rest in a moment.”

“I should hope so,” said Beelzebub, pulling both pomegranates towards themselves. They set to work dismantling one, relishing the way Gabriel’s face contorted in disgust at each seed they picked out. They popped a handful into their mouth, and chewed as slowly and loudly as they could manage, not bothering to wipe the juice that dripped down their chin. “Have you tasted pomegranate?” they asked, their mouth still full of fruit. “You really must try it.”

“I have better things to do than sit here and talk to a demon,” said Gabriel, jumping up. His hands were moving very fast, and completely without purpose. “I—I’ve got—angel stuff.”

Beelzebub scooped some lentils out with their bare hands and shoved them into their mouth. “Angel stuff. Of course.”

Gabriel tossed the owner of the restaurant a sack bulging with more coins than were probably necessary. “This should cover it.” The man barely managed to catch it. When he opened the bag he pressed a hand to his heart and muttered something in amazement.

Beelzebub turned back to their food. They shouldn’t have gone with the lentils, they decided, pushing the bowl away. They had so little taste that even the olives couldn’t redeem them. They’d rather eat just olives. Well, really, they’d rather eat just the pomegranate.

They realized suddenly that half the room was staring at them. This was exactly why they’d been in the corner in the first place. With a sigh, they bent back over the pomegranate and pointedly ignored everyone.

The other angel fidgeted and stuttered a great deal as he talked. Gabriel almost considered ending the conversation, but he really had nobody else to ask. This guy was relatively harmless, and if he did mention anything to the archangels, Gabriel doubted they’d take him seriously. “Well, if…if you want my personal opinion,” he said, “It would be best if there wasn’t a war at all.”

“But there is a war,” said Gabriel, his patience straining. This was why he never talked to this angel. He always had his own daft ideas about how things ought to be.

“I mean, it would be better for the war to end,” he clarified. “One way or another. I really don’t think it’s our place to interfere and choose sides in these mortal disputes. Oh,” he said, catching himself with a nervous laugh. “But, that’s not really by-the-book, is it? I mean, that’s not how things have been done in the past…”

“And if it were by-the-book,” Gabriel interrupted before the angel’s rambling got too far, as it almost always did, “what then? Which side would be the right one, do you think?”

“Do _I_ think?” The angel looked flustered. “Why…I don’t know. You know more about Greece than I do, and there’s others with a better understanding of our policies. Why don’t you ask Michael, or Sandalphon?”

Gabriel’s teeth gritted at the mention of Sandalphon’s name. He did not need another reminder of his former partner’s meteoric rise through the ranks after his, quote, “overwhelming success” in the Sodom and Gomorrah assignment. Sandalphon had even snagged the last archangel position that the Rebellion had left open. It seemed Gabriel should have proofread his report after all.

“The archangels have other things to do,” he said, forcing a smile. Plus, he didn’t need them knowing that he couldn’t come to a decision. He needed to show that he could make the right high-level choices, and make them decisively. That was how he was going to get to the top. Not through outrageously exaggerated memos.

“If you really had to pick a side,” the angel went on thoughtfully, “though I really don’t see why you would, I’d say pick the one that ends the war the fastest. Less bloodshed that way.” He gave a nervous laugh. “But, again, what do I know?”

Gabriel considered for a second. Athens and Sparta were matched well enough that he wasn’t sure which side’s victory would be faster, so that approach wouldn’t help. He had to admit, though, the demon had made some fair points back in the restaurant, and the last thing he wanted was to support the same side as them. Perhaps he should switch sides, just to be safe.

“Thank you,” he said, grinning and clapping the angel on the shoulder. “You’ve been very helpful…” he wished he could remember the angel’s name. “Pal.”

“Aziraphale.” A smile flickered nervously at the angel’s lips. Everything he did was nervous. It seemed his constant state of being. “Happy to help, of course. As always.”

“Sparta.” The other demon shifted in his absurd gilded chair so that he was in a position to be able to shrug. He never sat in the chair the way you were supposed to. It made Beelzebub wonder why he had a chair to begin with, and hadn’t just put an entire sofa behind his desk. “It’s obviously got to be Sparta.”

“Are you sure?” Beelzebub asked. If that really was the wrong answer (which, for demons, made it the right one), then it was very good they hadn’t mentioned the Peloponnesian war to any of their colleagues. Not that any of them would have understood. This demon, who had once been called Crawly but who had recently chosen some new name that escaped Beelzebub’s memory, seemed to be the only one around here who kept up with what was happening on Earth.

“I mean, think about it.” The demon formerly known as Crawly straightened a little more so he could wave vaguely at the air. “Athens goes down, whole region gets destabilized. Then you’ve got—well, instability. And all sorts of bad things come from that, right?”

“I suppose,” said Beelzebub flatly. They hadn’t really been thinking about the war in terms of the end result. They seemed to be making that mistake a lot lately.

“That all you wanted?” asked no-longer-Crawly. “It’s not that I don’t want to sit and chat, but…” He shrugged with a this-is-awkward cringe. “Legions to command. You know how it is.”

Of course they didn’t know how it was. Beelzebub tried not to seethe too obviously. They could have commanded legions, if anyone had given them the chance.

“Do me a favor,” they said, stuffing that anger down along with everything else. “Don’t mention this conversation to Dagon, or any of the others.”

“Sure, Beelz,” said no-longer-Crawly, with a grin. “Nothing to worry about. We’ve all got questions sometimes.”

“I wazzzn’t worried.” A snappish buzz crept into their voice. “And don’t call me Beelz.”

“Well, it’s just, ‘Beelzebub’ is a bit of a mouthful,” said no-longer-Crawly.

“That’zzz your problem, not mine.” Beelzebub stepped out of his office and shut the door. Almost immediately, they were caught up in the neverending tide of demons shuffling down hell’s dark hallways.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Nobody really knows how Crowley ended up commanding legions, least of all Crowley. He does like having his own office, though, so he's not about to tell anyone he had no idea what he's doing.


	5. 1259 A.D., Chengdu, China

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel wants to play a game. A board game, to be precise.

Beelzebub was tired. Tired of…well, all of it, really. There didn’t seem to be much on Earth to make it worth staying, besides the fact that hell was even worse. It wasn’t really that there weren’t nice things on Earth. It was more that Beelzebub couldn’t manage to enjoy them as much as they should.

They were just so _tired_. Tempting humans and spreading chaos got old after a while. It had been fun at first, dropping a few hints in the right places and then watching them destroy each other. Political intrigue had always been their specialty, and they loved watching the tension simmer just before it boiled over. But it was always the same. Either war would break out, or their brief human lives would end before things were settled. They knew, of course, that that was the objective. Being a demon, Beelzebub was highly in favor of death, or at least they were supposed to be. There was just already so much of it. They didn’t really see the point in causing more.

They had enjoyed it once, or at least they were fairly sure that they had. There must be some kind of satisfaction in watching the life drain out of another person, looking into their eyes and seeing the terror of what came next. Beelzebub just didn't feel it anymore. They had even tried working downstairs for a while, dishing out tortures and trying to find their own joy in others’ agonized screams, but it all just got so old. They had had enough victims. They were tired of victims.

What they wanted was an opponent.

Which was why, when Beelzebub got Gabriel’s message, they dropped everything they were doing and went to Chengdu to find out what he was up to this time. It was sure to be interesting, at least. And it wasn’t as if the siege they were supposed to be monitoring was going anywhere anytime soon.

For some reason, Gabriel had set up a table at the edge of someone’s field, underneath a dead tree. Possibly, he had wanted to make absolutely certain that Beelzebub couldn’t find food anywhere nearby. Luckily, they had come prepared.

“What is that?” Gabriel asked as they approached, a small sack in one hand.

Beelzebub sat down and pulled out a fuzzy brown kiwi. “Snack.”

Gabriel’s brow knitted. “You can’t eat that.”

Beelzebub took a bite and turned the fruit to show Gabriel the bright green flesh inside. “It’s a fruit.”

“Lord have mercy,” Gabriel muttered, shutting his eyes, covering his mouth with one hand, and swallowing hard. “_That_ cannot be right.”

Beelzebub slapped Gabriel’s letter down on the table between then. “You called me here,” they said, still chewing the kiwi. “What do you want.”

Gabriel drew a breath to pull himself together and folded his hands on the table in front of him, pointedly avoiding looking at the kiwi. “I have a proposition,” he said. “It’s all been fine, of course, sending our agents out to do the dirty work, and thwarting each other indirectly. But I feel, and I hope you’ll agree, that it gets old working through pawns. Sometimes, you have to roll up your sleeves and do the work yourself.”

Beelzebub took another bite of the fruit and watched Gabriel carefully, trying to work out what he was planning before he had finished announcing it. Was Gabriel finally planning to kill them? It had certainly taken him long enough. “What do you have in mind?”

“A different sort of contest,” said Gabriel. “Less time-intensive, and more decisive. No tricks. Me against you. Three matches.”

Beelzebub sincerely hoped he was not referring to sports again. He must know they would never agree to that.

The angel reached under the table and brought out a large board with a grid drawn on it. “I know you’ve been in China for a while,” he said, setting a bowl of black stones in front of Beelzebub and a bowl of white stones in front of himself. “Have you ever played go?”

A savage grin broke across Beelzebub’s face. They set down the kiwi and wiped their hands on their tunic. “Oh, Gabe, you are so far out of your depth.” They took one of the black stones and set it down with a decisive clack. “Let’s play.”

Gabriel frowned down at the board, contemplating his next move. He had actually taken the time to study the strategy of go, of course, but clearly not enough. The demon was more familiar with the game than he had anticipated. Slowly, he started to set down one of his stones, then drew his hand back, placed it somewhere else, and picked out the black stone he had captured.

“I didn’t expect that,” muttered Beelzebub.

“I’ll take that as a complement,” said Gabriel, with a smile.

The demon glanced up at him. “Because it was a stupid move.” They set down another piece to replace the captured one and scooped up three of Gabriel’s stones.

Gabriel suppressed a frown. “So you expected me to play well, then. Still a compliment.”

Beelzebub rolled their eyes. “Juzzzt play the game.”

Gabriel squinted at the board for another few minutes before deciding on the next move. “So,” he said conversationally, leaning back after placing the stone, “what were you doing before this?”

“As if I’d tell you.”

Gabriel nodded as if in agreement. The demon didn’t seem to know he’d been watching them, then. That was good.

“Shouldn’t you know that, anyway?” Beelzebub placed their stone and glanced up at him. “You contacted me. That means you knew where I was.”

Gabriel hadn’t realized that might have given him away. “It wasn’t easy tracking you down, I’ll be honest,” he said with a sigh. “You’d be surprised how many people there are with black hair and a dead look in their eyes. I couldn’t even tell people whether I was looking for a man or a woman, since you’re so hard to pin down. You’ll confuse the humans like that.”

“Good,” said Beelzebub indifferently, playing their next stone.

“Your clothes don’t help, either,” Gabriel added. He gestured at the demon’s black military-style tunic, then realized that might not be the best example. At one point, the demon had been in the habit of switching back and forth between the two ends of the gender binary, but recently they seemed more inclined to wear whatever they pleased. More often than not, that turned out to be a mix of garments that thoroughly confused the binary-minded humans. They had also kept the same tangled mat of hair since the Beginning, which, as far as Gabriel was aware, had never once been in style.

“Good.” Beelzebub gestured lazily at the board. “Are you going to play or not?”

“In a minute.” Gabriel scrutinized the board for a moment.

Just as he was starting to narrow down the options, Beelzebub spoke again and broke his concentration. “And what about you? I only ever see you like this.” They waved a hand at Gabriel as though indicating a pile of garbage they wanted thrown out.

“What?” Gabriel looked down at his robes. This was one of his favorite outfits, pale grey silk with embroidered lavender trim, and he couldn’t help but feel insulted. “No, I…I change my clothes. A lot, actually.”

“Not the clothezzz.” Beelzebub rolled their eyes. “Why are you always so male?”

Gabriel thought at first that the demon was mocking him, but it seemed a genuine question. He realized he didn’t really have an answer. “Well, the humans have to stick with one, right?”

“No.”

“Usually, I mean. Most do. So I just…I don’t know, picked one.”

Beelzebub’s forehead wrinkled. “Why not just pick something else?”

Gabriel opened his mouth to reply, then shut it. It wasn’t something he had really thought about before. He could change the appearance of his body easily, after all. Or even just the clothes. Deciding he wasn’t comfortable talking to the demon about things he didn’t have a decisive answer on, he placed his next stone and realized a moment later that he had made a mistake. He hoped his regret didn’t show too plainly in his face.

A glance at the demon told him it did. “Too bad,” they said, capturing five more of his stones.

Gabriel’s brow furrowed as he looked down at the now-crowded board. This was not going well for him. After deciding there was nothing else he could do, he growled, “Pass.”

“I win again,” Beelzebub swept the stones off the board, waved a hand over them to make them sort themselves, and dropped each handful back into their correct bowls. “Three games out of three. You shouldn’t have tried, Gabe. Why did you even bother playing the last one?”

“Hm,” Gabriel grunted, staring at the board.

“Sulking already?” Beelzebub sneered. “You must have known this was a bad idea. You never even had a chance.”

Gabriel sighed, letting his lips puff out. “Well, you beat me,” he said. “Congratulations. One question, though. What did you win?”

Beelzebub blinked in confusion. “Well—” Their sneer vanished, and panic crossed their face. They scanned the table, then looked up at Gabriel. “What did I—?”

Gabriel smiled that tight, merciless smile. “You just started playing without another question. You never even asked what the stakes were.”

“But I…I won.”

“And?” Gabriel’s voice was saturated with sarcasm. “What, did you think I was going to just leave? I was going to walk away and let you have Earth because you beat me at a board game? Is that what you thought?”

“So?” demanded Beelzebub. “I didn’t lose anything by—”

“Not exactly,” said Gabriel. “It got you out of Chongqing. Away from the siege.”

The usual cold fury sprang in the demon’s eyes as they looked at Gabriel. “What did you do?”

Gabriel leaned over the table, folding his arms on top of it. He didn’t answer immediately, so he could enjoy holding the demon in suspense. When he did speak, he did so as slowly as possible. “The khan is dead. My assassins will have reached him by now.”

Beelzebub’s eyes snapped wide. They didn’t seem to be able to find the words to speak.

Gabriel was more than happy to do that for them. “He never did declare an heir, did he? His sons will tear the empire apart trying to fill the throne. I wouldn’t be surprised if it starts a civil war. The Mongol Empire is finished.”

Beelzebub sat back slowly in their chair. Gabriel could see the realization of their mistake creeping over them, and he couldn’t resist gloating a little more. “I’ll tell you again, since it seems you forgot. Keep your eyes on the goal. Not on your opponent.”

Beelzebub drew in a deep breath and let it out slowly. “Civil war,” they repeated. “My lot give commendationzzz for that sort of thing, you know.”

Gabriel felt like he had been slapped in the face. He sat back in his chair. “But—No, I’ve ended the Mongol Empire.”

“The Pax Mongolica,” The demon said, nodding. “You’ve ended the most widespread force of stability Eurasia has ever seen. Well done.”

Gabriel ran a hand over his forehead. No, this wasn’t right at all. He had spent too long planning this for it to start crumbling around him now. “No, no, no, the Mongols are ruthless invaders. For heaven’s sake, you—you just came from their siege. They’re invading China as we speak! No, no.” He folded his arms and gave a short, sharp laugh. “I see what you’re doing. You know I fooled you, and you’re trying to embarrass me to make up for it.”

Anger flickered behind the demon’s eyes. “I thought your side were all for peace. The Olympiczzz, and all that.”

“No, you won’t get me like that again.” Gabriel straightened in his chair. “The Mongols are evil. I know that because _you_ spent so much time around Genghis when he was alive.”

“I only followed Genghis so I could report his atrocities back to hell.”

“See! Atrocities!” Gabriel jabbed a finger into the air. “And what do you mean, report them back to hell? Report them as your own devising, you mean?”

The demon opened their mouth, shut it, and leaned back in their chair without speaking.

Gabriel’s eyebrows rose. “Why, Beelzebub,” he said, with an almost genuine smile, “do you mean to tell me you haven’t been doing your job?”

“Maybe I supplement the reportzzzz, but I do my job,” Beelzebub snarled. “Can you say the same? How much time did you waste learning go, just to draw me out here? I can’t imagine you pass the time with strategy games in between blessingzzz and miraclezzzz.”

Gabriel decided not to answer that question. “It got you away from the siege, didn’t it? Stopped whatever you were doing there. That’s got to look embarrassing when you report downstairs.”

The demon squinted and rubbed their forehead. “And how are you going to report this to your people, hmmm? Murdering monarchs and starting wars? Sometimes I think you’d fit right in downstairs.”

Gabriel leapt up from his chair. “Take that back,” he demanded, raising a shaking finger. “Take it back right now.”

“Sit down, Gabe.” Beelzebub sighed, steepled their fingers, and leaned against them with their eyes shut. If there was any silver lining to any of this, it was that they looked just as upset about the outcome as Gabriel felt. They drew a deep breath, and then made a noise that was like coughing, but a hundred times worse. Their shoulders shook.

“What—” Gabriel stepped behind his chair as if that would somehow protect him. What was happening? Were they hacking up blood? Was a gigantic fly about to crawl out of their mouth and chase Gabriel out of town? Were they—heaven forbid—_crying?_

It was laughter, he realized as the demon raised their head, though worse than any laughter Gabriel had ever heard. It made his teeth want to shatter and his skin want to flake off his bones. Glancing down, he realized he had gripped the back of the chair so hard that the wood had splintered a little. His entire body was tense. A laughing demon could not possibly be a good sign.

“Well played, Gabriel,” Beelzebub looked up with a smirk that lacked a little of its usual condescension. They held out a hand across the go board. “We’ll call this one a tie.”

Gabriel looked down at the hand, still clutching the chair. “I would not touch your hand, demon—”

“Yeah, I know,” said Beelzebub, slumping backwards in the chair. “If you were falling into hell, and it was all you could grab onto. Why is it you who’s falling, and me who’s in heaven, in that scenario?”

“You—That’s not—Shut up,” Gabriel snapped.

Beelzebub pushed themselves up from the chair. “Well, I have the remains of a siege to get back to,” they said, picking up the bag of kiwis. The half-eaten one still sat on the table, forgotten. Gabriel avoided looking at it, hoping they would pick it up and take it away. They didn’t. “And I’m sure you have, what was it, ‘angel stuff?’ Good luck reporting this back upstairs, by the way. I’m sure they’ll love the way you hired assassins and invited a demon for a board game.”

“Oh, they will,” said Gabriel, before he could think of anything that made more sense. He wasn’t worried about how any of this would look to head office. He would report it the same way he reported all his dealings with Beelzebub: thwarting a demon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Unbeknownst to either of them, Möngke Khan was already sick and dying when the assassins reached him, so the outcome would have been the same either way.


	6. 1350 A.D., Milan, Italy

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Sometimes even supernatural entities need to take a break. Plagues can be very stressful.

Gabriel wasn’t, strictly speaking, supposed to be here. He was supposed to be out there slowing the spread of this new plague through Europe and trying to sniff out the demon who had unleashed it. But the plague was so widespread that he couldn’t narrow down where they might be, and several years of search had yielded nothing. After a while, all the vomit and gangrene and stench of death got to be a bit much. Gabriel didn’t think he could be blamed for needing a break. It wasn’t selfish, if you thought about it the right way. He would do better work once he was refreshed.

To be honest, he was a bit out of practice with good deeds and blessings. For the past few centuries, most of his efforts had been focused on trailing the demon and frustrating their schemes. He had mainly taken the Europe assignment because of his confidence that he could track them down and somehow trick them into lifting the plague. They had to be around here somewhere. I mean, a plague spread by flies? They might as well sign their name to it. At times, Gabriel wondered if he was walking into a trap, although it would have been a strange sort of trap to be so hard to find.

For now, though, Gabriel was sitting in a theater in perhaps the only city in Europe that the plague had spared. Well, spared might be the wrong word. Their ruthless quarantine policies might have had something to do with it.

On the stage in front of him, a very expressive young man was enacting an old Roman tragedy that someone had dusted off and repackaged as “neoclassical,” and which Gabriel was fairly certain was itself a retelling of a Greek story. People had always had a strange obsession with what they had decided was their past. To be fair, the Rome years had been some of Gabriel’s favorites, at least until the gluttony and sloth set in (or, as the demon insisted on calling them, “bread and circuses.” As if that was a real phrase). Gabriel’s nostalgia for Rome did not, however, extend to their drama. Though, he admitted, looking down at the impressive stage with its sweeping arches and painted background, the production quality had markedly improved since then.

The lead actor gestured a little too broadly as he plotted ghastly revenge against his own brother. Gabriel drummed his fingers against his knee and wished he had picked a different play. This was hardly the sort of thing an angel ought to be watching, and if he was going to neglect his heavenly duties like this, he felt he should at least act angelic while doing it. He glanced around at the audience and wondered how rude it would be for him to leave before the third act.

A familiar black smudge caught his eye, and he paused, frowning. That couldn’t be…He rubbed his eyes and looked again. Beelzebub, or someone who looked exactly like them, was sitting on the other side of the theater, their chin propped up on their folded hands, leaning forward to stare languidly at the stage with their elbows resting on their knees.

But they couldn’t possibly be here. They were supposed to be somewhere else, spreading disease and somehow slipping away from Gabriel whenever he thought he had gotten close. Not watching old Roman tragedies in Milan. Were they trying to bring the plague here as well? Onstage, the lead actor was now outlining his plan to force his brother to devour his own children, and Gabriel’s stomach turned over. Maybe the demon was taking notes to plot their own black and bloody deeds. Though it would be concerning, to say the least, if humanity had gotten better at inventing horrors than the denizens of hell.

Sensing someone watching them, Beelzebub’s eyes flitted through the audience and stopped on Gabriel. Their head jerked up off their hands. Their body was uncharacteristically tense, and they looked nervous, almost guilty. Was it possible they weren’t supposed to be here, either?

Angel and demon stared at each other across the crowded theater, ignoring the events unfolding onstage. Gabriel swallowed. He shouldn’t have been surprised to see them in a theater. Demons had to have hobbies, of course, and _Thyestes _was just the sort of violent, spiteful play they would enjoy. But not here, in Milan, when he was so firmly convinced that they were spreading pestilence somewhere else. But the evidence was right there in front of him. Gabriel blinked and had to consider the possibility that he had been wrong. Maybe the plague was just a plague after all.

A defensive sort of anger crept into Beelzebub’s face. Pursing their lips, they got to their feet, pushed past the other audience members, and left the theater.

Gabriel made to get up and follow them, but then stopped himself. He couldn’t really thwart demonic wiles where they didn’t exist, and if Beelzebub was in the middle of spreading evil, Gabriel doubted they would have abandoned their plans so suddenly. Like him, Beelzebub was just trying to enjoy a play. They had each caught the other slacking on their respective duties, and acknowledging that openly would only invite further embarrassment. Gabriel turned his attention back to the play. Better to pretend it had never happened.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> A short one this time. Next chapter will be longer, and involve more than zero lines of dialogue.


	7. 1571 A.D., St. Augustine, Florida

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel shares some news.

“Back?” Beelzebub repeated blankly.

Gabriel nodded and pointed at the ceiling. “Upstairs, I mean.”

The demon sat back and stared ahead, not sure how to react. Of all the things they had suspected when they had received Gabriel’s note (_12:00 Tuesday, St. James Park, London. Urgent. –G)_ this was not one of them. On reading it, Beelzebub had raised their eyebrows, muttered, “You won’t get me like that again, prick,” and scribbled a reply: _15:00 Thursday at the tavern in St. Augustine, or not at all, _signed with the dread sigil that represented their name and which would sting Gabriel’s fingertips if he was careless enough to touch it_._ The next day, another messenger handed them a piece of paper that simply read, _Fine. –G._ Beelzebub had narrowed their eyes, wondered what he was up to now, and doubled down on their precautions.

The extra two days they had negotiated for (they still considered it a negotiation, albeit an extremely easy one) bought them enough time to finish up their temptations elsewhere in Florida, set a few of their human agents to keep an eye out for assassins or any other underhanded tricks Gabriel might try, and scope out the meeting location. Before the meeting, they buzzed the tavern as a fly to see if anything was obviously amiss, until one man took too much of an interest in swatting them, and had then watched the entrance from the outside for three hours. Nobody came in or out apart from the usual crowd until Gabriel showed up, and once they were both inside, Beelzebub had been so preoccupied with scanning the restaurant for anything out of place that they almost missed what the angel had said.

Their eyes darted around. Distraction was Gabriel’s favorite tactic. “Why?” they asked, to keep him talking.

Gabriel drew a deep breath and folded his hands on the table. “Well, after you discorporated me in Mexico—thank you for that, by the way—”

“Believe me, the pleasure was all mine.” Gabriel had been running all over the New World, trying (mostly unsuccessfully) to put out the fires that the Europeans kept insisting on starting. Removing Gabriel just made the blood flow more freely, and then all Beelzebub had to do was sit back, watch the wars and genocide unfold, and write home about the results. It was possible that murdering Gabriel was one step too far—they had paid for it with half a century of mind-numbing boredom without anything to do but watch humans kill each other and take notes—but damn if it hadn’t felt good. “Should have seen the look on your face.”

“Yes, anyway.” Gabriel cleared his throat and continued. “After all the…” he closed his eyes and shuddered. “…paperwork, Michael and I had a little chat, and she—we—concluded, that my talents are wasted here on Earth.” He straightened and adjusted his coat. “I’ve been given a new post in heaven.”

“Right.” Beelzebub gave up on scanning the room and watched Gabriel instead. He had reminded them often enough not to let him distract them, but maybe he was playing the long game. Maybe he was planning to switch things up as soon as Beelzebub started to act on his advice. “Why are you here, then, and not up there?”

Gabriel shrugged. “I asked them for a week down here to tie up loose ends. Seemed the sort of thing you say in person.” He drew a deep breath as if he was steeling himself for something. Setting his jaw, he held out a hand across the table. “You were a worthy opponent.”

Beelzebub stared at the hand for a moment. Their eyes flicked up to Gabriel’s face, then back to the hand. This had to be some kind of trick. How many times had Gabriel refused to shake their hand? He must have known they would remember.

Gabriel’s usual air of superiority was gone. Without taking their eyes from Gabriel’s face, Beelzebub reached towards the hand, searching him for some sign of mockery, or hidden sarcasm. If it was there, he had hidden it uncharacteristically well. Their fingers closed around his hand. Gabriel suppressed a shudder, shook the hand with a brusque nod, and then pulled away.

It wasn’t a trick. He was serious.

“They’ll send another angel down to replace me,” said Gabriel. “You’ll like him. Real fire-and-brimstone type guy.”

Replace Gabriel? Replace _Gabriel_? It was unthinkable. Nobody else could match his skill for rationalization, the artistry of those passive-aggressive smiles, the way he gloated as if he didn’t realize or care that angels weren’t supposed to be proud. Anyone could call down fire and brimstone. Only Gabriel could keep up with the ridiculous game he and Beelzebub had devised over the past few millennia. Maybe they had started off as agents of two opposing sides, but after five and a half millennia, their rivalry was almost entirely personal.

Realizing they had been staring at the table, Beelzebub forced themselves to look up at Gabriel. Surely he would have agreed. After all, he had gone to all the trouble of returning to Earth and setting up a meeting just to tell Beelzebub this. He could have easily left them wondering. Instead, he was here, in a tavern of all places, to deliver the news in person. For once, he spoke to Beelzebub without all the usual façade of self-importance and pride. He spoke with respect. Like they were an equal.

Nobody had talked to Beelzebub that way since that stunt in the garden.

“Well,” said Gabriel, moving to get up, “that’s all. I should get back to London, if they’re picking me up tomorrow.”

“Tomorrow?” So this was how it was going to end. Five and a half thousand years of rivalry, and Beelzebub themselves had dealt the final blow. Gabriel had shaken their hand and all but conceded. Beelzebub was victorious at last.

If this was victory, they didn’t much like it. The past fifty years had been far too dull without Gabriel getting in the way. At times, they had toyed with the idea of discorporating themselves, just to change things up a little. An eternity of that… “No.”

Gabriel blinked, confused. “What do you mean, no?”

Beelzebub got up from their chair and walked out of the restaurant. They had one day to come up with something. One day to change the archangels’ minds. And, after all, what better way to foil his enemy than to keep him from his heavenly reward?

“Demon?” Gabriel called behind them. “Beelzebub?”

They didn’t answer. They had no time to waste.

Beelzebub was no Duke Hastur, but they liked to think they were fairly good at lurking. Among demons, they would probably be considered above average, which was saying something considering the lurking skill of the average demon. They were currently lurking in an alleyway behind the dingy London apartment building that Gabriel was using as his base of operations (why he had chosen London, apparently knowing Beelzebub was across the ocean, was a mystery, but anyway here he was). They hadn’t quite gotten into the rhythm of it yet, having only just gotten back from surveying the streets in insect form. Not that lurking technique mattered much right now. The archangel Michael was walking down the street at this moment.

Any minute now, she would turn the corner and hear a growl low enough and demonic enough to catch her attention. Then, once she started eavesdropping, she’d hear Beelzebub praising their dark master, celebrating their good fortunes in having their mortal enemy removed from this plane, and—this part was going to hurt—lamenting their many losses at Gabriel’s hands. It might not have been their best plan, but it was all they’d been able to come up with on such short notice. Beelzebub watched the alleyway entrance and drew in a deep breath, ready to unleash the initial growl. Any minute now—

And now Michael was looking directly at Beelzebub, with the morbid curiosity of a child about to crush an insect. So much for the plan, then. They’d have to improvise.

Beelzebub erased all traces of expression from their face and fixed Michael with their most soulless stare. Their biggest comfort right now was that archangels probably weren’t in the habit of carrying around holy water for quick errands to Earth. Most likely, the worst she could do was discorporate him, though that wouldn’t be pleasant. But they would not run. They would not show fear. She wouldn’t get the satisfaction. “Wank-wingzz,” they droned in greeting.

“Demon.” Michael turned and began to walk slowly down the alleyway. Her shoes clacked more loudly on the cobblestones than they had any right to. She twirled one hand and pulled a thin rapier from the aether.

“Are you going to discorporate me?” Beelzebub asked. “Go ahead. That’ll make, what, thirteen, fourteen times? I hardly feel it anymore.”

Michael kept walking without a word. There was no hurry in her steps. The glint in her eyes matched the light glancing off her blade, just as it had all those ages ago when she had lifted Beelzebub (though in those days they’d had a different name) by the throat and hurled them down into the Bottomless Pit.

The urge to step backwards came over Beelzebub, and it took more effort than usual to push it aside. _Do not show fear. Not this time. _“I’ll come back,” they went on. “I always do. No matter how many times your angel thwarts me, I always come back.”

That got her attention. Her steps slowed, but didn’t stop.

“I got him once, you know,” Beelzebub went on. “I can do it again. Sooner or later, he’ll slip up, and I _will_ make him pay for all he’s done to me.”

Michael was almost upon them now, and still she said nothing. Beelzebub looked up at her, unmoving and unmoved, with the same cold, dead eyes that had been known to stop armed men dead in their tracks. _Do it,_ their eyes said. _Kill me, I dare you. Give me the satisfaction._

Michael stopped in front of them. Something that might have been uncertainty flickered behind her hawk’s eyes. Beelzebub had done it. They had stopped the archangel Michael using nothing but their eyes.

Then Michael _tsk_ed. “Wretched creature.” She raised her rapier and swung.

“Apologies for my tardiness,” said Michael as Gabriel opened the door. “I ran into…I would say trouble, but they really didn’t give me any.”

“What do you mean?” asked Gabriel.

“Nothing, Gabriel,” she said with a dismissive wave. “May I come in?”

Gabriel stepped aside uncertainly to let her inside. He had thought she was just here to pick him up. “Is there…something we have to do before returning?”

“About that.” Michael folded her hands in front of her. “I wanted to discuss that with you.”

Gabriel looked at her blankly for a moment, then forced a congenial smile and shut the door. Michael’s “discussions” tended to be rather one-sided, and historically they had not gone well for him. He glanced at the table and chairs and wondered if he should invite Michael to sit down. Perhaps not. Angels usually had all their meetings standing. He wasn’t used to doing this sort of thing on Earth. “Of course. What is it?”

“It has come to my attention,” she said, “that perhaps your work here has been more valuable than we believed. Perhaps your performance in the department of blessings, miracles, good deeds and the like has been somewhat…” she looked around as she searched for the right word. “…lacking, but it appears you have been extremely diligent in thwarting the Adversary’s representatives.”

“Of course.” Gabriel had no idea what she was talking about.

“I must admit, I am surprised you did not describe the extents of your efforts in your reports,” Michael went on. “Your descriptions were somewhat…scant. I understand the drive towards virtue—it is one of our prime directives, after all—but there is no need to be quite so humble.”

Humble? Gabriel wondered where she was getting her information. Even he knew he had a dangerous tendency towards pride. The demon certainly liked to remind him enough.

“I apologize if I was harsh earlier,” said Michael. “I was unaware of the extent of your efforts. And I now believe your presence on Earth may be necessary to—”

“So I’m not going back?” Gabriel said before he could stop himself. That seemed to be the sticking point of the conversation. He wished Michael would just get there already.

Michael’s nostrils flared. Interrupting Michael was never a good idea. “No,” she said, “I no longer believe you should. I will take this matter up with the rest of the council, and with our new information, I am sure they will agree with me.”

Of course they would. It was rare that the council didn’t agree with Michael.

“But…” Gabriel laughed nervously. “I don’t understand. My promotion—”

“Promotion?” Michael gave a delicate laugh. “Gabriel, who said anything about a promotion? You were to be simply moved to a different post upstairs.”

Gabriel took a deep breath and tried not to think about how small he felt. “I just thought—”

“Gabriel.” Michael’s voice was delicate, but somehow all the more dangerous. She stepped forward, gently set both hands on his shoulders, and smiled. “You are needed here. Understood?”

Gabriel nodded. He could never manage to meet her piercing gaze for long. “Yes, I understand.”

“I am glad.” Michael let go of him and stepped away. “We all thank you for your work, Gabriel. Your efforts here are truly admirable.”

Michael liked to say that a lot. Gabriel wondered sometimes if she had ever once meant it.

After she had left, Gabriel set down in one of the rickety, uncomfortable chairs in the tiny flat. This was supposed to just be a temporary visit. He’d need to find a better place to live. Probably somewhere in the Americas, if he was going to continue thwarting the demon. And who knew how much longer they were going to keep him down here, now that they had decided his work here was so invaluable?

He had thought he might be disappointed, but he now recognized the feeling as relief. Gabriel ran a hand over his face, letting out a slow breath. He shouldn’t be relieved about being kept out of heaven. It was heaven. By definition, it was better than anything on Earth. Everything was so clean there, so white and pure and…

And empty. And big. Heaven always made him feel so small.

He frowned, knowing that wasn’t right. Of course he was disappointed. There was no other way to feel, after receiving such news. That was what it was, terrible, terrible disappointment. If he had mistaken it for relief, it was only because the shock of it had messed with his mind. No, there was nothing about the prospect of another few centuries on Earth to be relieved about.

“Ah, Beelzebub!” Crowley wound his way between the desks, demons, and filing cabinets that made up most of hell. “Lord of the flies! Just the demon I wanted to—What’s all this?”

Beelzebub didn’t look up from the form they were filling out. A six-inch stack of paper sat in front of them, surrounded by three other towers, each a foot tall. Boxes of more forms stood piled along one side of the desk, forming a wall that Beelzebub had hoped would deter anyone from talking to them. Clearly, it hadn’t worked.

“Report of Discorporation?” Crowley read upside-down on the top form. He winced, hissing as he did. “Ooh, that’s a rough one. What happened up there?”

“Michael,” Beelzebub growled.

“Archangel Michael?” asked Crowley. “Wank-wings? What was she doing on Earth?”

“Routine visit.”

“Well, that’s just bad luck, then,” said Crowley, with sympathy that almost sounded real. “Don’t be too hard on yourself. Happens to the worst of us.”

“Have _you_ ever been dizzzcorporated?” Beelzebub asked, looking up at him coldly.

“Well, no,” Crowley admitted. “I’m down here most of the—”

“Then don’t patronizzzze me, Crowley,” Beelzebub snapped.

Crowley’s golden eyes flashed dangerously. None of the princess of hell liked being talked back to by their inferiors. A dangerous eye-flash was the mildest punishment Beelzebub could expect for it, which was why they only ever talked back to Crowley. “Watch yourself, Bee. You’re lucky I like your style.”

“Beelzebub,” they reminded him. “What do you want?”

“Just looking for someone to take up a new assignment on Earth,” he said. “Thought you might be up for it, but it looks like you’re tied down at the moment.”

“What was the assignment?” Much as Beelzebub couldn’t stand Crowley’s passive-aggressive friendliness (at least, they were pretty sure it was passive-aggressive), they had to admit that he had a certain flair when it came to plotting wiles. Unlike the vast majority of demons down here, Crowley thought outside the box.

Crowley grinned, pushed aside one of the paper towers, and sat on the corner of the desk. “I think you’ll like this one. Get this.” He rubbed his hands together. “Corruption, _inside the Catholic church_.” He bit his lip gleefully and waited for Beelzebub to act impressed.

Beelzebub wasn’t sure why. They had never acted impressed in their entire life. “They’ve already beat you to that one.”

“What?” Crowley’s proud smile vanished in disbelief. “They never!”

Beelzebub nodded. “The entire church split over it. Some guy nailed stuff to a door. It was a whole thing.”

Crowley muttered something unintelligible and slid down from the desk. “I swear, sometimes I wonder what we’re even here for.”

Beelzebub glanced up, on the verge of agreeing, but decided against it. The last thing they needed was someone finding out how little work they had actually done to secure souls for hell in recent centuries. Instead, they bent back over the form and started filling out “Circumstances of discorporation (part 12b of 4,839).”

“Oh, hey,” Crowley added, “awful work in the New World, by the way. I hear Dagon’s really pleased. Enough to overlook this little blip, surely.” He gestured at the mountain of paperwork surrounding Beelzebub.

“Good to know,” they said coldly, without looking up.

“Alright, I can take a hint,” said Crowley with a sigh. “Nice talking to you. I’ll get out of your way. Leave you to your forms.”

He sauntered away in that needlessly exaggerated way of his, and Beelzebub sighed miserably at all the paperwork they had left. They were really, really starting to wish they hadn’t discorporated Gabriel. Everyone knew the paperwork was bad, but this was even worse than they had imagined. They dipped their pen and continued writing, muttering a curse as the ink came out blotchy and clotted, like it always did in hell. Beelzebub wouldn’t wish this on their worst enemy.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> What happened in Mexico was that Beelzebub pointed a gun at Gabriel, who said, "What are you gonna do, shoot me?"


	8. 1805 A.D., The Rocky Mountains

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel falls (lowercase f) and makes a deal with a demon.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hey look, America exists now! Gabriel can finally live among his people.

Gabriel fell for what seemed like a lifetime. His heart throbbed in his throat as the air whistled past him. It was almost like flying, except when he flew, he could control himself, and terror didn’t flood his every vein. It had been so long since he’d manifested his wings that he had almost forgotten how, and by the time he managed it he was spinning out of control and they wouldn’t catch the air. He hurled every miracle he had left below him, desperate to slow his fall, but it was not enough, not enough, and as terrifying as it was to fall the idea of hitting the ground was incalculably worse. He wasn’t sure, but he might have been screaming, _no, no, please, no—_

And then the world exploded. He was no longer falling. He had a vague idea that he was looking up at a blue sky and trees, but the pain was so blinding that he couldn’t be sure. Fire shot up his chest with each breath. He couldn’t feel his legs. His fingers twitched, but he was fresh out of miracles. It had taken all his power to keep himself from dying instantly. “God,” he managed to get out, and then gritted his teeth as lightning arced through his lungs. “_Dammit_.”

Over the throb of his blood in his ears, he thought he heard a pair of footsteps. He tried to turn his head, but his neck wouldn’t move that way. “Who’s—” he gasped. “Help—Someone—”

A pale shape surrounded by something dark swam into his vision. “Well, look at this,” said a familiar, lazy voice. “A fallen angel.”

Gabriel groaned through his teeth. Of course the only person around was the last one he wanted to see. “You—! Should’ve known—”

“What, you think I made you slip?” asked Beelzebub. “No, you’re just clumsy. I’d have waited until you were almost at the top.”

They had a point. That would have been the only thing worse than falling where Gabriel did. He probably shouldn’t have attempted such a difficult and completely uncharted climb when he was so low on miracles. He almost wished he hadn’t slowed his fall, and just let himself discorporate. Even fifty more years of paperwork might be better than lying here in absolute agony while the demon smirked down at him.

“Are you crying?” asked the demon, their voice rising in delight. Their head tilted up to look at the sheer cliff towering over them. “You can’t have dropped more than a few hundred feet. I’ve had much worse. You’re overreacting.”

Gabriel hadn’t noticed the sting in his eyes until the demon mentioned it. He blinked it away furiously, and his vision cleared just a little. He took the opportunity to glare at Beelzebub, though the effect was probably ruined by his crumpled body. Not that he could, or even wanted, to see the state of it.

“Come on, Gabe,” said Beelzebub. “Pick yourself up and dust yourself off. That’s what we all did downstairs.” They tilted their head. “Unless you can’t? What’s wrong, out of miracles already?”

The tiniest movement sent furious bolts of pain through Gabriel’s nerves, but the agony, and all other sensation, stopped at his legs. He couldn’t move, he was out of miracles, and he was in unbearable pain. Gritting his teeth so hard they nearly shattered, he swallowed the remaining shards of his pride and said, “Help me.”

The demon’s eyebrows rose. “What was that?”

As much as it hurt to beg the demon for help, it could not possibly be worse than the pain he was currently experiencing. “Help me.”

There was a vicious light in Beelzebub’s pale eyes. “Not so high and mighty anymore, hm? Fallen angel indeed.”

“Shut—” Gabriel’s eyes were tearing up again. He blinked hard and felt them run down his face, hating the fact that he couldn’t move his arms to wipe them away. Why had She made human bodies so fragile? Break a few bones and the whole thing just falls to pieces. “Please,” he begged.

“Please?” Beelzebub repeated. “Oh, you must be in pain. Must have hit your head, too, if you think asking nicely will convince me. What’s in it for me?”

“I—I’ll owe you a favor,” Gabriel gasped. “Just—Please.”

A cruel smile twisted Beelzebub’s lips. They folded their hands behind them and looked down at Gabriel. “What sort of favor?”

“Whatever you want,” Gabriel said desperately. Anything, he didn’t care, he just wanted the pain to stop and he wanted to be able to move again.

“I can agree to that.” Beelzebub knelt down, raised their hands over Gabriel, and paused. “Although,” they added, looking off to the side, “I could get into a lot of trouble for healing an angel. Besides, how can I trust you to hold up your end of the bargain?”

“I’m an _angel!_”

“You’re a bastard.”

Gabriel gave the demon as furious a glare as he could muster. “I’ll—I’ll swear it on Her name.”

Beelzebub nodded, muttered, “That would do it,” and snapped both hands.

The demon hadn’t bothered to numb anything, so Gabriel felt every bone fragment snap back into place. It nearly made him black out, but he clung to consciousness by sheer force of will. Sensation returned to his legs, and he immediately wished that it hadn’t. His vision clouded with spots of white, and the thought flashed through his head that the demon might be killing him instead of saving him. But then the pain started to fade.

He drew a deep breath, relishing the ability to fill his lungs without fire scorching through them. Very slowly, he tested his limbs to make sure the demon hadn’t left anything out of place, then pulled himself up to a sitting position. When he was sure he was able, he got to his feet and stretched. “Thank God that’s over.”

“I’m standing right here, and you’re thanking Her?” said the demon.

“Well, I’m not going to thank you,” Gabriel snapped. “It was a fair trade.”

“We’ll see about that once you pay me back.” Beelzebub craned their neck to look back up at the cliff. “What the heaven were you doing up there, anyway?”

“Climbing.”

“Yeah, I got that,” said Beelzebub in a flat voice. “You know you can just miracle yourself to the top?”

“That’s not the point.” Gabriel looked down and unsuccessfully trying to brush the various blood and dirt stains off his clothes. It really hadn’t been practical of him to go trekking through the wilderness in pastels, but if he was going to be heaven’s liaison on Earth, he ought to look the part. It hadn’t been a problem until recently. Actually, since a good chunk of his miracle allotment had gone into keeping his clothes pristine, maybe it had. “I climb for sport.”

Beelzebub’s forehead crinkled. “You came all the way out to the middle of the continent for _sport_? There’s mountains in New York, you know.”

“Well, that and to keep an eye on Lewis and Clark,” Gabriel admitted. “It gets dull sometimes.”

“Why would you be doing that?” asked Beelzebub. “You know once they map and settle this place, it’ll be the Spanish conquests all over again.”

“Not this time,” said Gabriel, with more confidence than he felt. Truth be told, he was mostly here to make sure they didn’t start any major wars with the Native Americans along the way. But the demon didn’t need to know that. “Head office is big on second chances.”

“Are they now,” said Beelzebub, unamused. “Must have changed their policy in the past few millennia. They’ve already used up a lot more than two. And where is the expedition party?” they added, looking around.

“Like I’d tell you,” Gabriel snapped, after accidentally glancing over the mountains and giving away the answer. He was going to have one hell of a time getting back to them without miracles. Climbing had suddenly lost a much of its appeal. “What are you doing out here, anyway?”

Beelzebub was looking over the same ridge Gabriel had just glanced at. “I guess I’m sabotaging Lewis and Clark.”

Gabriel straightened, and his spine popped in a few places. “Not on my watch.”

“How do you plan to stop me without any miracles?” asked Beelzebub. “Good luck getting out of the mountains, Gabe. Maybe I’ll see you around once the month is over.”

“Oh, you will,” Gabriel shot back without any actual idea of what he was threatening.

Beelzebub blinked at him, unimpressed. “I’ll be back for that favor,” they said. “You’d better not break your word, or She might judge you rather harshly. Unless you’d rather try your odds with that whole ‘second chances’ policy.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Afterwards, Beelzebub and Gabriel both independently got lost in the mountains trying to find the expedition party, and stayed there long after Lewis and Clark had returned home.


	9. 1889 A.D., New York, New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel receives a rather disturbing assignment, and learns some things about his boss. Beelzebub takes up a new hobby.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter got away from me a little. Hope you like words because there are a lot.
> 
> Also, hey, there's a final chapter count now! That's fun.

“Gabriel.” Michael had her own special brand of fake smile. Hers was sweet, innocent, and entirely empty. She directed it at Gabriel as she beckoned him into her office. “Please come in.”

Gabriel nodded and stepped inside. Like the rest of heaven, Michael’s office was a stark, cold, blinding white. She had been given one of heaven’s coveted corner offices (angels weren’t supposed to covet, as a matter of policy, but it was a corner office after all), and two walls of floor-to-ceiling windows looked out onto a landscape of pyramids, clocktowers, cathedrals, and other architectural marvels from Earth. The same pure white light illuminated everything from all directions. There was nowhere in heaven for shadows to hide. As always, Gabriel felt scrutinized, and so, so small.

“It had come to my attention,” said Michael, taking her place behind her standing desk and picking up a folder thick with papers, “that the majority of your work on Earth has been centered around…” She picked out one of Gabriel’s reports, raised one thin eyebrow, and read the single sentence he had written in the description section. “…‘Thwarting a demon.’ Is this accurate?”

“Yes.” Gabriel gave a confident and decisive nod. The kind of nod he thought an archangel might give. In the back of his mind, he hoped, as he did every time Michael called him into her office, that this conversation would go better than most of the rest.

“Would I be correct in guessing,” Michael asked, “that the majority of cases concern the same demon?”

Gabriel nodded again, a little less decisively. He wondered, as he had several times, if Michael had encountered Beelzebub before making the decision to stay on Earth. He couldn’t be sure how much she knew about them.

“Well, then.” She snapped the folder shut. The cardstock and paper really shouldn’t have that sharp of a noise. “It seems to me that you would be more productive in other areas if this demon were removed. Would you agree?”

Gabriel nodded a third time. He wasn’t sure where this was going, but he didn’t seem to have any choice but to follow.

She gave him that sweet, hollow smile again. “Excellent. I’ve already drawn up all the necessary paperwork to request a vial of holy water.” She opened another folder, turned it around to face Gabriel, and tapped the bottom with a pen. “You just have to sign here.”

He swallowed, struggling to keep his face even. “Holy water.”

“So that you can remove the demon,” said Michael. “Permanently.”

“Ah.” Gabriel nodded, forcing his own smile. “Yes, I see. An excellent idea.”

“I’m surprised we didn’t think of it sooner,” said Michael. “Really, I’m surprised you didn’t, since the demon’s been giving you so much trouble.”

Gabriel kept nodding and picked up the pen. It shook a little in his hand, and he silently cursed himself and stilled it with a great effort of will. His signature came out a little wonky, despite all the time he had spent practicing the impressive swoosh of the G and elegant loop of the L. “Well, that’s that,” he said, clicking the pen and setting it down with a smile. “How long will this take to process?”

“Oh, it’s immediate.” Michael shut the folder, and it vanished, whisked away to some heavenly filing system. “You may retrieve the holy water from the supply closet on your way out.”

“Right,” said Gabriel, nodding a bit more than was necessary and turning to leave. The door was on a different wall from where Michael had left it. He faltered a little, then turned to the right wall.

“Oh, and Gabriel,” Michael added. “If this obstacle is successfully removed, and we do see an improvement in your performance…” she trailed off, her eyebrows arched pointedly. “Perhaps we can discuss your advancement.”

The holy water weighed down Gabriel’s jacket pocket like a bundle of dynamite. “Okay,” he muttered as he walked back down the stairs. “Kill the demon, kill the demon, kill the demon…” It wouldn’t be the first time he had considered it. Beelzebub was his enemy, after all, and they could be so aggravating. Not to mention that time they had shot him in the head. They were enemies, and always had been. This was the logical conclusion of events. One of them was always going to have to kill the other. But…

But he didn’t want to _destroy_ them. Holy water would wipe Beelzebub clean off the face of existence. Sure, they were a demon, but they didn’t deserve _that_, surely. Maybe a few cutting words, a major inconvenience or two, maybe even humiliation once in a while. But complete and utter destruction? That wasn’t in the rules of the game.

Rules. He shook his head. Ridiculous, that they should have rules. This was the Great Plan, the Long War, the Battle for Earth. It was winner-take-all, no-holds-barred. The stakes were too high for anything else. This wasn’t a game, and it wasn’t just the two of them playing. Why should they have rules?

Clenching his jaw, he exited onto the street. The sunlight seemed dim compared to the searing light of heaven, and he had to let his eyes adjust for a second. He forgot sometimes that Beelzebub wasn’t just his personal enemy, they were _the_ enemy, the Adversary’s representative on Earth. Given the chance, they would destroy Gabriel, too. It was their job, after all. So why should he play nice?

He shook his head and put his hands in his coat pockets. One hand closed around the glass bottle. It just didn’t seem fair. Gabriel had used all sorts of underhanded tricks against Beelzebub, but nothing like this, nothing so…permanent. He let a puff of air through his lips and tried to get used to the idea of completely obliterating them. Hell would send another demon to take their place, but strange as it was, he had gotten used to Beelzebub. He knew their tricks, and knew how to catch them off-guard. Thwarting them was his routine.

No, no, no, he was looking at this all wrong. Beelzebub was a demon. The enemy. For the sake of the Great Plan, they needed to be thwarted, defeated, or removed as heaven saw fit. And right now, heaven saw fit to have Gabriel melt them into a puddle of smoking goo. He drew a shuddering breath, muttered, “Thy will be done,” and tried to ignore the sinking feeling in his chest.

Michael had mentioned advancement. He decided to focus on that instead. Sure, it was conditional on his improved performance, but once Beelzebub wasn’t around to distract him Gabriel was sure he could excel. He should be grateful for the opportunity. Michael had been holding the possibility of a promotion over his head for so long…

Gabriel stopped in the middle of the sidewalk. The crowd filtered around him, shooting him nasty looks as they stepped down over the curb to pass him. His brow creased. How long, exactly, had she held it over his head? How long had he obediently followed along?

Someone called him a rude name, and he came to his senses. “Sorry,” he said, even though the person who had yelled at him had already moved on. “I need—”

He turned and walked back to the entrance to heaven. There were some questions he needed answers to.

“Thank you for meeting with me,” said Gabriel, almost folding his arms across the grimy tabletop, thinking better of it, and folding them in his lap instead.

“Of course, Gabriel” said the curly-haired angel cheerfully. “I’m always glad for a chance to visit Earth. They make most delightful desserts.” He took a bite of his cake and his face scrunched up with pleasure as he chewed and swallowed. Gabriel couldn’t stand to watch. “Are you sure you don’t want anything?”

Ordinarily, Gabriel never would have agreed to meet over cake, or any other type of food. They were only here because he’d been in such a hurry to talk to Aziraphale, and the other angel was so enthusiastic about Earth confections, and he had been such a great help with the discorporation paperwork back in the 1500’s that Gabriel hadn’t really been able to say no. “No thanks, I…I’m not hungry.”

Aziraphale took another tiny bite—at least he ate with more delicacy than the demon—and nodded to Gabriel. “What was it you wanted to talk about? It sounded quite urgent.”

“It is.” Gabriel swallowed and glanced around, just in case. Even outside heaven, you never knew who might hear. “You…hear things around the office, I’m sure,” he said, leaning forward and lowering his voice. “You talk to Michael.”

“Well, yes,” said Aziraphale. “I talk to everyone.”

Gabriel swallowed before going on. “What does she say about me?”

Aziraphale gave him an odd look before giving a nervous laugh. “Why, what sort of things might she say?”

Gabriel’s throat felt sticky. This was going to be difficult to actually put into words. “I mean in terms of my position,” he said. “She…drops hints, sometimes, about advancement. Management.” He struggled to swallow. “It’s been a long time, now.”

Aziraphale nodded and set down his fork. He seemed to be getting it now.

“You must hear things up there,” said Gabriel. “I mean, you work in records. Nearly everything goes past your office. Do you know, was that…was that ever in the cards for me?”

The angel was having trouble maintaining eye contact with Gabriel. His blue eyes kept flitting away, then back, then away again. At last, his mouth twitched in an attempt at a smile, and when he spoke, his voice was quiet. “I don’t know, Gabriel…”

Anger boiled up inside Gabriel’s chest. His hands tightened into claws, then fists. “Great,” he said, leaning back in his chair and turning to look out the window. His voice came out strained. “Just great. Fantastic.”

He didn’t need to see Aziraphale’s face to feel the pity in his look. “Oh, Gabriel. I’m sorry—”

“Sorry doesn’t do much good, does it?” Gabriel snapped. His mouth stretched into the tightest smile that it ever had. “I tried for so long. Do you understand? So long. And Michael—” he shook his head and laughed sharply. “She _lied_ to me. What a—”

“Gabriel.” Aziraphale’s tone wasn’t harsh, exactly, just firm. They gave him a stern look. “I’ll pretend I didn’t hear…what you were about to say. But please.”

Gabriel swallowed. He had forgotten himself. “Sorry,” he said, still in that damnably tight voice. “I didn’t—None of this has anything to do with you. It’s all just so…” He gritted his teeth, but couldn’t find a word for it. “Ineffable” didn’t have quite the sting he was looking for.

“Michael shouldn’t have…” he stopped himself before daring to utter a word against the archangels. “I mean, she didn’t lie, exactly, I’m sure,” he said, trying to soften the blow. “Maybe you misunderstood.

“So it’s my fault?”

Aziraphale looked down at the table. He didn’t seem to want to answer. “I know what might calm you down,” he said after a moment. “There’s this thing here called ‘tea.’ You might have heard of it. I’ve had it once—”

“No,” said Gabriel. “That won’t help.”

“Are you sure? It’s quite nice.”

“Yes, I’m sure.” He drew another shuddering breath and fought to pull himself together. “Thank you, Aziraphale. That’s all I needed to know.”

“Of course,” said Aziraphale. “If you should ever need anything else—”

“Thank you,” Gabriel repeated, more pointedly. “Goodbye.”

Aziraphale got it that time. “Oh. Right, I’ll just…” He looked down at the rest of his cake. “I’ll have them box this up for me.”

While he took the plate to the counter to ask for a box, Gabriel pressed his fingers to his temples and rested his elbows on the table, no longer caring if the grease got into his suit. He tried to regain control, but his breath came in shaky bursts, and there was a lump in his throat that would not flatten no matter how many times he swallowed. His eyes stung for just a moment, and he gasped as he tried to wipe them. God, he felt so stupid. Nearly six thousand years, he had slaved away down here. And all this time…

A hand touched his shoulder. He flinched away from it. “Are you sure you don’t need anything else?” Aziraphale asked, looking down at him in concern. Somehow, he had ended up with two entire cakeboxes under his other arm.

Gabriel gritted his teeth and glared as hard as he could manage. What a nice picture he must make right now, his eyes red, unable to breathe straight. “Yes, Aziraphale,” he said sharply, resenting the angel just for seeing him like this. “Goodbye.”

The blasted angel left at last, leaving Gabriel alone to stew in his own thoughts. Anger at Michael and at the unfairness of it all still burned in his veins. He wanted to climb back up to heaven and tell her exactly what he thought. He thought she might kill him if he did. Or worse, demote him. Reaching into his pocket, he closed his fingers around the vial of holy water, and came to a decision. He pulled himself together, left some money on the table without counting it, and left.

Gabriel had had eyes on Beelzebub for long enough to have figured out where their base of operations was, though he’d never actually been there himself. He was a little too afraid of what he might find there—bear pits, poisonous vines, demonic sigils to ward off anything remotely divine or good. He hiked the winding road across Long Island, dreading whatever it was that he was approaching, shielding himself from danger by every means he could think of and then whispering a prayer to Her to cover the rest. He expected to find a run-down hunting lodge like something out of a horror novel, all rusted nails and creaky doors and boarded-up windows, maybe some animal bones hanging from the roof, maybe even a few human ones.

What he didn’t expect was a quaint and shockingly normal-looking cabin, nestled in the trees on the slope. He thought for a moment that he might have been mistaken, but no, the demon’s presence was there. A low hum grew as he approached, and he walked around the cabin towards it. Perhaps the demon preferred to spend time in their insect form when they weren’t working. Gabriel couldn’t imagine it was comfortable to be shrunken down to the size of a fly, but perhaps it was different when you turned into a whole swarm of them.

Behind the cottage stood three wooden boxes on stilts, each one alive with the buzz of insects. They flew around the boxes in a thin haze, crawled over their surfaces, and wormed in and out of slits at the top. But they were too big to be flies. “Bees?”

A gunshot stopped him in his tracks. “Take one more step towards my hives and I’ll decorate them with your brains,” called a familiar voice.

Gabriel raised his hands and turned towards the window. “We agreed no more discorporation.”

“Gabriel?” Beelzebub looked at him blankly. “How did you find this place?”

“We need to talk.” Gabriel lowered his hands. “No tricks.”

Beelzebub eyed him skeptically, but lowered the gun after a moment. “Come inside.”

Gabriel glanced back at the hives, then stepped slowly towards the door, watching out for any stray gunshots, but Beelzebub seemed to have gotten all the violence out of their system for now. “So,” he said, opening the door. “_Bee_-elzebub?”

Beelzebub shot him a cold glare. Their finger curled over the trigger of the hunting rifle still in their hands. “Is that funny to you?”

Their tone suggested that, if Gabriel found it funny, he might quickly find himself short a kneecap or two. “No,” he lied.

“Good.” Beelzebub leaned the gun against the wall and turned to lead him inside. The inside of cabin was just as unusually normal as the outside, with a surprising lack of bloodstains or rusty nails. There weren’t even any eerie cobwebs, although considering Beelzebub’s association with flies, that shouldn’t have been surprising. It was all very simple and rustic, all unfinished wood and roughly-made, functional furniture. Gabriel followed Beelzebub into a small kitchen with a stove in one corner and a table next to the window. “Honey?” the demon asked, without looking back at him.

Gabriel froze. “What—_what_ did you—?”

“Oh, Gabe, no.” Beelzebub gave him a look of sardonic pity and held up a golden jar. “Do you want any. I’ve got more than I bloody know what to do with.”

Gabriel relaxed. “You know I don’t eat.”

Beelzebub shrugged as if to say, “your loss,” and picked up a spoon that was already on the table. Slumping into the only chair in the room, they unscrewed the lid of the jar and ate a spoonful of honey by itself. “What do you want,” they asked, in the flat, brusque way they always opened conversations, without even the courtesy of a question mark at the end.

Gabriel nodded, conjured himself a sleek, silver office chair which looked entirely out of place, and sat down. “Well, cards on the table.” Taking a deep breath, he pulled the glass bottle of holy water out of his pocket and set it down. The sunlight filtered through and made dancing silver patterns on the rough wood.

Beelzebub looked at it for a moment without understanding. Then it clicked. The spoon dropped back into the jar, clinking against the glass. “Oh, Satan.”

Gabriel nodded. “I’m supposed to get rid of you.” Trying hard not to think too hard about what he was about to do, he struggled with the stopper a bit before pulling it out.

Beelzebub’s chair screeched against the floor as he pushed it back against the wall. “Gabriel, wait—”

“But I still owe you one from that time in the Rockies,” Gabriel went on, talking over him. “And I’m an angel of my word. So.” He lifted the bottle, took a moment to steel himself, and then lifted it to his lips and tipped back his head.

It flowed down his throat and pooled inside his stomach, just cool enough to make him shudder. Thank heavens it was only water. Water was the only thing he had ever managed to keep down, although he only drank it out of necessity, if he was on a run or a climb and people started to notice that he never drank from the half-empty bottle he carried around with him. Even then, he only ever drank a mouthful or two at a time. Finishing an entire bottle took much longer than he had expected. “Now we’re even,” he said, wiping his mouth with the back of his hand when at last it was empty.

Beelzebub looked at the empty bottle with an almost mournful expression. “I really wish you hadn’t done that.”

Whatever reaction Gabriel had expected, it hadn’t been that. “Why not?”

“Because my side gave me this.” They reached for the cabinet behind them, opened a drawer, and pulled out what looked like an ordinary box of matches, except that it was painted so black that it seemed to absorb light itself. The word “Hellfire” scribbled across it in red chalk and the worst handwriting Gabriel had ever seen.

Gabriel pressed a hand to his stomach. He felt like all the holy water he had just drunk was about to come back up. “Oh.”

“I figured your side would get you to get rid of me sooner or later,” said Beelzebub, looking at the matches with a sigh. “Thought we’d have a good old-fashioned standoff, and then call it good.”

That would have been a much better idea. Maybe Gabriel would have thought of it if he hadn’t been so blinded by rage. He reached for the glass bottle and tipped it towards him slightly. “I…I think there are a few drops left in here.”

“Oh, good,” said Beelzebub. “Why don’t you—”

Gabriel was already shaking what remaining holy water he could out into the palm of his hand. “Be warned, demon,” he said loudly, just in case anyone happened to be listening. “I have here that which could wipe you from existence. Do not move, or I shall…flick it at thee.”

Rolling their eyes, Beelzebub scraped one of the matches against the side of the box, and it burst into flame faster than any Earthly match would have. “You will not destroy me, angel,” they said, matching Gabriel’s volume. “For if thou shouldst attempt it, this whole place would alight will hellfire, and thee along with it.”

Gabriel swallowed, eyeing the burning match warily. “…So, are we good, then?” he asked.

“I’d say so.” Beelzebub pinched the flame between two fingers to extinguish it, then closed the matchbox in their fist and burned the whole thing to cinders. The sight made Gabriel flinch as he wiped the holy water on his jacket. “You still owe me, though.”

Gabriel scowled, irritated. Of course he did.

“Is that all?” Beelzebub droned, eating another spoonful of honey. “Or would you like to stay for lunch?”

“No need to threaten me, I’m going.” Gabriel got to his feet. The holy water sloshed around in his stomach in a way that he did not like at all. He looked at the office chair and wondered whether he should unsummon it or leave it here for the demon to deal with. It did clash horribly with the rest of the cabin. “You could stand to decorate this place,” he said, looking around at the plain wood. “Oh, I know.” He clapped his hands, and the entire room, minus the chair, changed into a familiar brightly-lit, white-walled office.

The jar of honey slammed down onto what was now a plain white desk, positioned so that Gabriel and his chair stood behind it, while Beelzebub, in a much smaller chair, sat in front. Real anger flared in Beelzebub’s eyes, burning through their usual cold dead scowl. “Get out.”

Gabriel pushed in his chair with a smile. “Sure. I’ll just head back to the real thing.”

Beelzebub pushed themselves to their feet. Outside, the constant low humm of the beehives grew louder.

Gabriel disappeared with a snap rather than using the door. He wasn’t sure whether Beelzebub would actually sacrifice the bees to attack Gabriel, but he wouldn’t put it past them.

The bees had started as a sort of experiment, if a slightly morbid one. Despite their affinity for insects, Beelzebub had always been a little disturbed by the swarm behavior in some of them. The way hundreds of ants formed too-perfect lines to bring food back to their colony. The way worker bees would kill themselves to inflict minor pain on any threat to their queen. The way they were assigned roles at birth and followed orders until they died without so much as a stray question. It was a little too familiar.

Beelzebub couldn’t believe that all the bees just went along with it. Surely some of them had doubts. Maybe a drone, after thinking things over, might decide he didn’t want to die in mating just to perpetuate the species, or maybe a worker would stop and wonder why the queen’s life should be worth more than her own. Or maybe not, maybe they really did all share one hive mind, and humans were the only creatures in creation allowed free will. But if that was the case, it really didn’t seem fair to give angels the capacity for independent thought, and then expect them to act like bees.

That was how it had started. Beelzebub observed the bees for weeks, looking for signs of dissent or originality. They even tried to tempt some a few times, although bees were so different from humans that they couldn’t really figure out how. And anyway, the drunken way the bees sort of careened through the air on their too-tiny wings, combined with their sheer numbers, made them a little too dizzying for Beelzebub to follow. Staring at them for too long lulled them into a haze. Then they realized how relaxing it was be to just sit there, watch the fuzzy black dots swarm into and out of the hives, and let the constant low buzz vibrate through their skull and drive out all other thoughts. And _then_ came the first harvest of honey, and Beelzebub was hooked.

They were sitting outside watching the bees with another jar of honey and a spoon when the summons materialized in front of them. Beelzebub set the honey down, miracled the stickiness from their hands (they had learned by now that no amount of wiping would get rid of it), and plucked it out of the air. It was the standard sort of thing: _Demon Beelzebub requested to appear before Dagon, Lord of the Files, under threat of eternal torment, agony, inconveniences both minor and major, _and so on. Beelzebub sighed. Since their last report, they’d been expecting this. Dagon would not be pleased that the angel was still alive.

They materialized directly into the office building that hell used as an entrance and took a moment to get used to the clamor of the city, even muted as it was by the walls. Beelzebub had never liked the city. Too many people, and too much noise, even if it was more conducive to wiles and temptations. Once they were sufficiently adjusted, the demon stepped into the rickety elevator and waited for it to chug its way down into the realm of torment.

Apart from the screams of agony and moans of hopeless despair, the noise of hell wasn’t that different from the noise of the city. There were still far too many people, and it was far too loud. Beelzebub fell into the usual sluggish tide of demons and let it carry them towards Dagon’s office.

Hastur and Ligur were waiting outside the door, both sneering unpleasantly. “Hi, Beelzebub,” said Ligur. “How’s Earth? I hear your plans have been falling a bit _short_ of the mark lately.”

Hastur’s smirk widened. “Killing an angel was a rather _tall _order, especially for you.”

Ligur’s low, sluggish laugh joined Hastur’s uncontrollably high one. Beelzebub ignored them. Hastur and Ligur’s jokes were always the same. They were even worse at puns than most demons, which was saying something. Hell may not have invented wordplay, but they had been the ones to thoroughly ruin it.

“Oh, come on, guys,” said Crowley, sauntering past. The crowd parted to let him through the way it only did for a Prince. “Bit of a _low_ blow, isn’t it?” Grinning, he reached down to tousle Beelzebub’s hair condescendingly.

Beelzebub smacked his hand away and shot him a withering glare. They were lucky it was only Crowley. Anyone else would have had them demoted. Crowley, however, just muttered, “Ow,” in an affronted tone, and walked away rubbing his wrist sulkily.

Hastur, who had been grinning with Crowley and nodding his approval turned to Ligur and muttered, “What was the joke? I don’t get it.”

“There was a joke?”

“Let me through,” Beelzebub said to Hastur and Ligur, holding up the summons, resisting the urge to tell them both to shut it, and wondering how in heaven they had ended up ranked below these idiots. “I’m to meet with Dagon.”

“You may not come back in one piece,” said Hastur, stepping aside. “Dagon’s a bit _short_ on patience.”

“You already used ‘short,’” Beelzebub muttered under their breath, and lifted the fish-shaped knocker to knock at Dagon’s door. The sound echoed down the hallway.

A moment later, the door clicked and swung open by itself. “Enter, Beelzebub,” barked Dagon. Beelzebub did, and waited for Dagon to speak. They had learned that was best.

The back wall of Dagon’s office was a floor-to-ceiling window into a massive aquarium. She stood with her back to Beelzebub, silhouetted against the watery blue glow, watching the hellsharks swim restlessly in a space too small for them. The hellsharks were similar to Earth sharks, except each one had a minimum of three mouths, and instead of fish they fed on the souls of the damned. Dagon had once held a meeting in here during feeding time. Sometimes, when Beelzebub closed their eyes, they could still see the carnage.

Dagon held up a piece of paper without turning around. “Do you know what this is?”

Beelzebub was obviously too far away to actually read whatever the paper was. “No.”

“It’s your most recent report.” Dagon looked down at it. “A bit wordy, as always. And, I’m afraid, disappointing.” She turned around, and when she spoke, sharp, silver teeth flashed. “You failed, Beelzebub.”

“The angel wazzz prepared,” Beelzebub began. “He had holy water—”

“Did I say you could speak?” Dagon threw the report down onto her desk. “Explain yourself.”

Beelzebub waited a moment and then tried again. “The angel was prepared. He had holy water. Had I tried to burn him, he would have destroyed me, and I did not see the value in both of us—”

“I’ve already read your arguments,” Dagon interrupted, driving her fingertips into the report on the desk. “Do not waste my time.”

Beelzebub gave a tiny sigh, tilted their head, and refrained from saying, _then why did you ask?_

“I cannot tolerate sloppy work.” Dagon’s teeth clicked against each other as she enunciated. “I cannot allow this to become a habit.”

Ah, so they had reached the threats-and-intimidation part of the meeting. Beelzebub waited passively for it to be over so they could bow out. Dagon wouldn’t throw them to the hellsharks just for this—at least, they were pretty sure she wouldn’t—and the threats of demotion didn’t really scare them. They were already so much lower on the corporate ladder than they wanted to be that it wouldn’t be much of a blow. Besides, hell couldn’t demote the demon who had, as far as they knew, single-handedly killed a third of Europe’s population during the Middle Ages, just because they’d failed to kill an angel armed with holy water.

Dagon flipped open a manila folder on her desk. “I went through some of the Earth observation files.” The sharp, commanding edge vanished from her voice the way it only did when she was about to say something so nasty she didn’t need it. “And I found something interesting.”

Panic shot through Beelzebub. They had forgotten all about those files. If anyone down here stumbled across a picture of them and Gabriel cordially playing go in China, they might draw the wrong conclusion. “I can explain—”

Dagon held up a photograph of Beelzebub all in white, standing among their beehives, their face shielded by a wide-brimmed hat and a veil. “Picked up some hobbiezzzz, have we?” she said, mocking Beelzebub’s buzz.

Beelzebub blinked and swallowed their words. Was that really what they looked like in their beekeeping suit? They probably should have been relieved that the photo was ridiculous enough to distract from their correspondence with Gabriel. They weren’t.

“I doubt you’d want your colleagues to see this photo,” said Dagon. “You’d never hear the end of it. Think of the _puns_.”

Beelzebub shuddered. Hastur and Ligur would never let go of “Bee-elzebub,” and their jokes were already so bereft of variety.

“You are a servant of hell,” said Dagon, her voice regaining its sharpness. “Your hobbies are malice and deceit. You spread evil across the globe and wrest souls away from the light. And you do _not_,” she finished, slamming the photo into the desk, “make a habit of failure, or this photo might find its way to a copy machine. Is that understood?”

“Yes, Lord Dagon.” Beelzebub looked down to hide the bitterness twisting across their face. So Dagon had finally figured out where to hurt Beelzebub. Right in the dignity.

Gabriel focused on the rhythm of his breath and his feet pounding the dirt as he jogged through Central Park. His legs were just starting to burn, and soon he would really get into the rhythm of it as the blood rushed through his muscles and his head and his heart. Blood and bone and tissue, all pumping and working together in perfect unison, greater than the sum of their parts. As everything was. As everything should be.

Michael had her reasons. He was sure of that. He _had_ to be sure of that, or else the scaffolding of the world would crumble, and Gabriel had leaned on it too long for that to happen. No, Michael certainly had her reasons for misleading him. She had to motivate the armies of heaven somehow, and promises of advancement just happened to be the best way to motivate Gabriel. She was just making sure he did his best work, that was all. It was entirely justifiable. Gabriel had no doubt of that. He was an angel. He wasn’t made for doubt.

Okay, true, his first attempt to report recent events might seem to suggest otherwise. He must have accidentally dissociated in the middle of it, because he knew he had not meant to write most of those things about Michael, and definitely not four pages of it. He’d scanned it over again, cringed at some of the choice phrases he’d used, and burned it before starting over. The second report came out twice as long, and had employed certain words that an angel was definitely not supposed to use.

But it was okay, really, because the jogging was sure to clear his head. He could feel it working already. Once he had burned off some of this excess energy, he could approach the report with a cool head. He just needed to work through this anger, and realize that it was misdirected. He could hardly blame Michael for his own shortcomings. If he wanted to be management material, he should have worked harder, and not gotten so distracted by the demon.

He wasn’t entirely sure how, exactly, he could have succeeded in his Earthly duties if he let the demon run rampant as they pleased. But just because he couldn’t see an answer didn’t mean one didn’t exist. It just meant he couldn’t see it, and that was his own failing.

The burn crept into his lungs, and he sucked down a breath of crisp, fresh air. His legs cycled through the motion of running as his heart beat in time with his feet, and his blood sang as it rushed through his veins. There was a machine inside him of dizzying complexity, cogs and levers and pulleys synchronized perfectly, whirring and pulsing in perfect harmony, not a single cell out of place. A beautiful, ineffable system. Everything in its place. Everything as it should—

His foot snagged on something and he crashed down hard, catching himself with one arm, but not before his ankle twisted and screamed out in pain. He pushed himself up as fast as he could, but his foot throbbed, and he fell back onto his knees before he could fully put his weight onto it.

“I’m so sorry!” A wispy-haired woman with a dog leash in one hand rushed over to him. “I tried to keep Topsy out of the way, he just runs wherever he likes, you know how they can be—Are you alright?”

“Fine,” said Gabriel, still gritting his teeth against the pain. The dog, a little white piece of fluff who clearly did not understand how small it was, circled and yapped at him. Gabriel lifted the leash over his head to avoid getting tangled again and gave the dog a violet-eyed look that made it whimper and slink back behind its owner. “I suggest you train that thing a little better,” he said, rubbing some healing into his ankle and getting to his feet, more successfully this time.

“We’re trying,” she said, “but Topsy’s only a puppy—”

“Give it a shorter leash, then.” Gabriel brushed the dirt out of his white shirt, scowling at the tracks that clung stubbornly to the fabric. “Or keep it inside.”

“Y-yes, sir,” she said, lowering her eyes. “Sorry to have bothered you—Have a nice day.”

Gabriel shook his head in disdain and resumed his run, but his steps were a little lopsided even after miraculously healing his sprained ankle, so he gave up and went home. The run had distracted him a little, at least. And he did need to file a report soon.

Back at the flat, he sat down at his desk, pulled out another “Earthly Activities Report” form, and began scribbling. He’d stick to the facts this time. That was really all they needed to know. _Attempts to destroy demon unsuccessful. Demon was prepared with equivalent countermeasures. Plan to resume normal thwarting activities at once._ After a moment’s thought, he added, _Further attempts deemed inadvisable._

He filled out the rest of the form, folded it up, and sent it to heaven with a snap. Now that it was over with, he let out a deep breath, leaned forward to prop his elbows on the desk, and rubbed his eyes. All that was left was to wait for Michael’s response. It wouldn’t take long. One of her dreaded summonses would show up at some point in the next week, and then he’d have to go stand in her cold, blinding, terrifyingly blank office again while she told him exactly how much of a failure he was. He drew a deep breath and sank lower into his chair. Well, at any rate, it would be over soon. Waiting was always the worst part.

He waited for months. The summons never came. Michael did not mention it again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You have NO IDEA how long I have been waiting to make a "Bee-elzebub" joke.


	10. 1922 A.D., New York, New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Gabriel and Beelzebub enjoy some illegal drinks in the prohibition era (at least, one of them does), and discuss what to do about the paper trail they've accidentally left behind.

Jazz poured from a nearby gramophone and pooled at the ceiling like smoke, bubbling over the dull buzz of conversation. In one corner, four sharply-dressed men leaned over a table, talking in low voices. At the other end of the room, an actress was laughing too hard at a joke her companion had made, while a bartender handed their friend three more drinks than any of them needed. Beelzebub leaned back in their chair, sipped the sweetened cocktail from their teacup, and looked around contentedly as the low droning and the alcohol lulled them into a sleepy state.

The man at the door opened it to admit a new patron to the speakeasy, and Gabriel stepped in, gave the doorman a vapid smile, and looked around before lighting on Beelzebub. His pinstriped grey suit looked beige in the dim yellow light, his purple tie almost black. “I give it ten minutes before the police get here,” he said in a hush, sitting across from Beelzebub at the small round table. “Make this quick.”

Beelzebub sighed. “Of course you called the cops.”

“What did you expect?”

"Evening, sir," said the bartender, making his way to their table. “What can I get you?”

“He doesn’t drink,” said Beelzebub, waving a hand at Gabriel. “One of those—”

“I’ll have what they’re having,” said Gabriel, with a sharp nod towards Beelzebub. In response to their surprise, he bared his teeth in a smile.

“Coming right up.”

Beelzebub’s eyebrows rose. Every so often, Gabriel would try doing something just to catch them off guard. It almost never worked. “Gabriel, that’s illegal.”

“Please,” he scoffed. “The laws of God are above those of any Earthly kingdom. And my side were never against alcohol.”

“Is that why you called the cops?”

“Well, I’m sure they’d find a whole lot of other shady activities down here.” Gabriel nodded towards the table in the corner, where two of the gentlemen in suits were now shaking hands while the other two eyed each other suspiciously. “They, for instance, can’t be up to anything good. Though they do dress well,” he added, nodding to himself as if he were taking notes. “I’ll give them that.”

Beelzebub’s permanent frown deepened a little. If they’d known Gabriel was going to be this comfortable around bootleg alcohol and organized crime, they’d have picked a different place to meet. Maybe that was why Gabriel had agreed after only rejecting two of Beelzebub’s other suggestions.

“Well, you called the meeting, demon.” Gabriel spread his hands. “What’s up?”

With a quick glance around the room, Beelzebub reached into their coat, and pulled out a thin package wrapped in brown paper, and slid it package across the table to Gabriel.

With a cautious glance at Beelzebub, Gabriel unwrapped the brown paper to reveal a stack of photographs. Frowning, he thumbed through a few. “Are these all us?” He paused on a photo of the two of them playing go in Chengdu. “They didn’t even have cameras back then.”

“They’re not _mine_, you git. I found them downstairs. Earth observation files.”

Gabriel glanced up sharply. “They have those?”

“Yes, they have those,” hissed Beelzebub. “Keep your voice down. And I’ll bet your lot do, too.”

“How did you get them?”

Beelzebub sipped from the teacup. “You’ve heard of having friends in high places?”

Not that Beelzebub would, under any circumstances, call Lord Crowley a friend. They had just given him a hand once or twice. He was really entirely unsuited to his post—he couldn’t get anyone to take him seriously, and didn’t seem inclined to try the methods that worked for the other princes—and when riots broke out on level seven, he had practically begged Beelzebub for help. They had obliged, partly because it was the sort of work they wanted to be doing anyway, and partly because it wouldn’t hurt to have dirt on a prince of hell. In exchange for their silence about Crowley’s incompetence, Crowley would see to it that Beelzebub had whatever they asked for.

“So, what, are you putting together a scrapbook?” asked Gabriel, looking back down at the photos. “Why are you showing me these?”

“Tell me what those look like to you.”

Gabriel shuffled through a few more. “A very clever and, may I say, stunningly handsome angel thwarting some piece of demonic garbage.”

“Oh, for—Be serious, Gabe,” Beelzebub sighed. “What would they look like to head office?”

Gabriel stopped on a picture of the two of them shaking hands in a tavern in St. Augustine. “Oh.”

“Exactly,” said Beelzebub. “Too civil. We can’t keep meeting like this.”

Gabriel glanced up and gestured at the two of them. “You mean, like this meeting right now? This meeting that you called, to tell me that we need to stop meeting?”

Beelzebub’s lips pressed together. “Not my point.”

“I don’t see why this is my concern,” said Gabriel, turning back to the photos. “My people are more understanding than yours. I’m sure they’d let me explain.” His brow furrowed, and he held up a photo of himself falling down a cliffside, winds spread and twisted at the wrong angles. “What does this one have to do with anything?”

“Nothing,” said Beelzebub. “I just wanted you to know I had that.”

Gabriel scowled and put the photo back down with the rest. “My people would understand. We’re enemies, we thwart each other, sometimes face-to-face. Nothing wrong with—” His mouth hardened into a straight line, and he held up a photo of himself staring open-mouthed at a bullet heading towards his face. “Really?”

Beelzebub nodded, pleased. “Perhaps I should make a scrapbook.”

With a huff and a shake of his head, Gabriel turned back to the photographs. “How many of these are like that?” he asked, shuffling through several more.

“Most of the rest of them.” Beelzebub waved a hand. “You’ve got the point by now.”

Shooting Beelzebub an irritated look, Gabriel gathered the photos into one pile and clacked the edges on the table to straighten them. “Why are you just now bringing this up, anyway? Have a close call downstairs, did we?”

“No,” Beelzebub lied, taking the photos back and separating them into incriminating ones and embarrassing photos of Gabriel. Taking the former pile, they set it alight with a flicker of fire from their fingertips. “I cover my tracks.”

“Hey, what do you think you’re doing?” yelled the bartender. “No fires in—”

Beelzebub snapped lazily, barely glancing over, and he suddenly turned to face the wall. “But you’re not quite so neat. You can’t be sure your people would believe you, and I’m just as dead if heaven sees these and word gets downstairs.”

“And how exactly would that happen?” Gabriel scoffed.

“Please. You think I don’t know about the back channels?”

“Back channels?”

Beelzebub looked up. Gabriel seemed honestly baffled. “You don’t know,” they said. “Don’t you work under Michael? She never mentioned them?”

“There aren’t—there aren’t back channels,” said Gabriel, forcing a dismissive laugh. “That’s ridiculous.”

The photos had burned down to their fingertips, and they crushed the remaining scraps in their hand to snuff out the flames. Remembering the bartender, they snapped. He spun around, looking confused, and then got back to work. “Not my fault if they don’t tell you things,” said Beelzebub with a shrug.

“They tell me things!” Gabriel insisted. “All sorts of things.”

“Sure, Gabe.”

“One bees knees,” said the bartender, setting a teacup in front of Gabriel.

Gabriel jolted in his chair, pressing the back of his hand to his mouth to keep from bursting out laughing. “You drink _what?_” they asked Beelzebub.

“I like the taste,” said Beelzebub, a warm flush rising in their face. “Shut it.”

“Sure, bees knees.

“Call me that again and you won’t have any knees,” Beelzebub snapped. “My point is, cover your tracks, Gabe. No more meetings. No more correspondences. And for Satan’s sake, no more _breaking into my cabin_,” they added with a low hiss.

“That was one time!” Gabriel threw up his hands. “It wasn’t a break-in. Nothing was broken.”

“Oh, so I suppose all those spiders phased through the windows by themselves?” Beelzebub suppressed a shudder, remembering the flash of fright when they opened the door and found the floor and walls thick and black with skittering arachnids. They would have called it petty if they hadn’t spent so much time rearranging the tree roots along his jogging path to trip Gabriel up. “We shouldn’t even know where the other lives,” they pointed out. “We’re enemies.”

“That’s fair,” said Gabriel. “I was planning to switch apartments soon, anyway. I assume you’ll be doing the same with your cabin.”

“Naturally.” Beelzebub had no intention of doing so. They couldn’t just uproot the bees, and even if they did, Gabriel would just find them again.

“Alright, then.” Gabriel raised his teacup. “To the Great War.”

Beelzebub wasn’t sure what Gabriel was doing, but had a pretty good idea that he didn’t, either. “The Great War,” they said, mirroring him.

Gabriel stared straight at Beelzebub with an expression that said, _see, I can do this too, _and brought up the teacup to take a sip. His eyes bulged. He choked and spit the mouthful of drink across the table. “What the _hell_,” he coughed. “People drink this stuff?”

Beelzebub fell back in their chair, cackling. “That’s my move, Gabe,” they said. “Shouldn’t have tried.”

“It burns,” Gabriel was clutching his throat as his face contorted. “Why does it _burn_? Did you poison me?”

“It was a _cocktail_,” said Beelzebub, still laughing. “It was sweetened, for hell’s sake. Have you never tasted alcohol before?”

“I thought it was tea! That’s basically water!”

“You thought I came to an illegal underground bar to drink tea?” Beelzebub wiped tears from their eyes. People were starting to stare. “Honestly, Gabe—”

“Okay,” said Gabriel with a tight smile. “I think we’re done here.”

“Oh, wait.” Beelzebub glanced at the clock on the wall. It had been just under ten minutes since Gabriel had arrived. If they could just keep him here a few more minutes… “One more thing. Jazzz music?” They had managed to mostly conceal the buzz in their speech over the years, but that was one word it always crept out on.

Gabriel looked at Beelzebub suspiciously. “What about it?”

“That’s what I was going to ask,” said Beelzebub. “What exactly is the deal there?”

Gabriel blinked, straightening a little. “I could ask you the same thing. Some people get so up-in-arms about it, but upstairs doesn’t have much of a stance.”

“Neither does downstairs,” said Beelzebub. Not that many demons even knew what jazz was. “Tempting humans to appreciate jazzz hasn’t exactly brought us an influx of souls—”

“It’s just music,” said Gabriel, moving his hands pointlessly. “I don’t see what the big deal is, morally speaking. And it’s just—it’s sort of all over the place, you know? Like, it’s fun, but what exactly is it doing?”

“Right,” Beelzebub agreed. “And what’s the deal with improvising? It would sound just as good if you wrote it down first. Maybe better.”

“Yes, thank you,” said Gabriel, looking relieved. “It’s impressive, I guess, but unnecessary. And I don’t see the value in being ‘different’ when that doesn’t necessarily mean ‘good.’”

“Exactly!” Beelzebub’s palm slapped the table for emphasis. “And as for the dancing—”

A knock on the door put a stop to all conversation in the room. “NYPD,” said a gruff voice. “Open the door, or stand back.”

“Shit,” said the bartender, grabbing the necks of two liquor bottles and stuffing them under his coat.

“Don’t take them with you, Lewis!” said the doorman, running over. “What if you’re caught?”

“But—”

The shady, well-dressed men in the corner had vanished, leaving only a handful of teacups to show that they had ever been there. The actress, who was sitting on a table and telling a story with far more gesticulation than it required, fell off and would have clocked her head on a nearby table if her friend hadn’t caught her. “Get a grip, Lucy,” she hissed, and smacked the man they were with on the arm. “Don’t just stand there, help me with her.”

Gabriel leaned back in his chair with satisfaction. “This is where crime gets you, demon,” he said, waving his hands around at the disorder. “Is it worth the trouble?”

Unconcerned, Beelzebub raised their eyebrows and finished off their cocktail. “Gabe,” they said in a condescending tone, “did you forget that you’re in here, too?”

That wiped the smug smile off his face. Confusion crossed his face as he looked around at the rapidly emptying bar, probably wondering where everyone was disappearing to. Beelzebub doubted he was familiar enough with underground saloons to know how to find the hidden exits. “You said no tricks!” he said, turning back to the demon.

Beelzebub shrugged. “Hey, I’m not the one who called the cops.”

“You distracted me on purpose,” said Gabriel. “You—you brought up jazz to keep me talking!”

“Shouldn’t have trusted a demon.”

“You have until three to stand back from the door,” said the gruff voice. “One—”

“Too bad you’re not supposed to disappear in the sight of humans,” said Beelzebub. “Or magically convince the police to let you go free.”

Gabriel scowled. Beelzebub imagined he had been about to do just those things, before they pointed it out.

“—Two—”

The speakeasy was empty now except for the two of them and the actress and her two friends, who were struggling in a half-drunken pile towards the back exit. Beelzebub pointed behind Gabriel. “Oh, hey, what’s that?”

“—Three.”

Gabriel turned around. The door splintered as the police broke it down. When the angel turned furiously back to the demon’s seat, he saw only a housefly winding its way through the air towards the open door, wobbling with the fly version of laughter.

_Shouldn’t have trusted a demon._

They were right, of course. Gabriel had only himself to blame for letting the demon pick their place of meeting after only two objections. He had gotten complacent. From the looks of those photographs, both of them had. They were getting a little more familiar with each other than enemies ought to.

Except they weren’t enemies. Not exactly. They were more…rivals. It was a small difference, but still important. A rival was someone you wanted to beat. An enemy was someone you wanted dead. And both of them had already proven, multiple times, that they didn’t.

Gabriel walked out of the saloon unnoticed by the policemen. He had no intention of getting arrested, whatever upstairs might say about it. They never looked into these things too closely, anyway. Beelzebub was being a bit paranoid with this stuff about the photographs. If nobody had noticed by now, why should they ever?

Rain drizzled onto the dark streets, but the water slid off his suit without touching the fabric. It would have been a shame to ruin the silk, after all. Maybe the demon had a point. If heaven really did keep files of the kind Beelzebub had mentioned, it was a little risky to just leave them lying around for anyone to stumble across. Particularly if there was a photograph somewhere of him sitting in the middle of a cabin drinking a bottle full of holy water. He swallowed the twinge of shame at the thought. Not his best moment.

_Cover your tracks_, the demon had said. Gabriel didn’t like the phrase. It reeked of something illegal, something _wrong_, and Gabriel hadn’t done anything wrong. He was just thwarting wiles. It wasn’t like they were fraternizing. So what if he had passed up several chances to kill the demon? So what if they had a no-discorporation agreement between them? It was all very antagonistic. They were enemies.

Well. Rivals.

In a weird way, he did trust Beelzebub. He trusted them to always act, if not in their own self-interest, then against Gabriel’s. Trusted them to always show up at the worst possible time and throw him off-balance in the least expected way. Trusted them to stop short of actually killing Gabriel, follow every plan through to the bitter end, and stick to their word in the rare instances when they gave it. They didn’t have to tell Gabriel about the photographs, or hold on to the hellfire until they had a convincing reason not to use it, or agree to these meetings without planning an ambush.

Internalized arguments chafed against each other in his mind, and he frowned, his eyebrows pinching together. This was one of those things he’d rather not think too hard about. Instead, he focused on, as the demon put it, “covering his tracks.”

Nobody noticed him when he stepped out of the elevator and into the white expanse of heaven. He smiled and nodded at a few passing angels as he made his way to the records department. Beelzebub might have friends in high places (or whatever the non-friendly, demonic equivalent was), but Gabriel had strategic allies, too. At least, he hoped he did.

“Aziraphale!” he said jovially, stepping into the records office. “Hey, buddy. How’s it going up here?”

Aziraphale started, looking up from the book he was scribbling in. Four other books lay open on his desk, as well as several loose sheets of paper. Gabriel didn’t see how he could keep anything straight. “Oh—Gabriel.” The angel arranged his face into a startled smile. “Hello.”

“Been a while, Zira,” said Gabriel, his face stretched into a smile that he hoped looked at least a little bit genuine. “Can I call you Zira?”

“I’d…really rather you didn’t.”

Gabriel didn’t let that slow him down. “I brought some of that tea stuff that you like from Earth,” he said, setting a cup down on the desk. It had been steaming when he’d bought it over an hour ago, but it had finally calmed down to a more reasonable temperature, thank heavens. What was even the point of a beverage you had to wait that long to drink?

Aziraphale looked blankly at the lukewarm tea. “That’s, er…very thoughtful of you. Look, Gabriel, it’s not that I don’t appreciate you stopping by, but…” he waved a hand over the various open books. “I’m a little busy?”

“Oh, of course.” Gabriel held up his hands. “I’m just passing through. Need to get into the Earth observation files. You know, for some…Earth work. There’s something I need to—”

“Right that way.” Aziraphale pointed, and then bent back over his books. “Hundred and twelfth door on the right. The usual four-dimensional filing scheme. I trust you can find your own way around.”

Gabriel waited a moment, then nodded. “Great. Well, see you around,” he said, with one more round of smiling before he turned away and went in the direction the angel had indicated. It couldn’t be that easy, could it? Beelzebub made it sound like they had to pull a lot of strings to get into the files. Gabriel just walked in.

He couldn’t help feeling uncomfortable at the kind of trust this implied, trust that he was currently taking advantage of for his own benefit. Well, but what did it matter, really? What Michael didn’t know wouldn’t hurt her. And, again, it was all just thwarting. He wasn’t doing anything wrong. Really, if you thought about it the right way, it was entirely correct.

He frowned as his thoughts chafed against each other again. He shut them out, like he always did when that happened, and focused on searching through the files. He was an angel. He wasn’t made for doubt.


	11. 1963 A.D., London, England

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> It's the Cold War, and Beelzebub is having a lot of fun. Gabriel, not so much.

Now this was the kind of war Beelzebub could get behind. Less outright violence, more subtlety and propaganda. A war of ideologies. Familiar, like the bees, but pleasantly so. After six thousand years of heaven and hell’s own furtively simmering conflict, it was kind of nice to see the humans come up with their own scaled-down version. Beelzebub got so tired of killing. For once, this was a war they didn’t mind, and in fact thoroughly enjoyed, taking part in.

The demon made their way through London, a briefcase in one hand and a particularly deadly umbrella in the other. Behind mirrored aviators, their eyes scanned the streets. This last mission had been a lot of fun, but also a lot of trouble, and it wouldn’t do for them to slip up now when they were so close to delivering the documents. Nobody had seen them go into or out of the lab—getting into classified areas was a cinch when you could literally be a fly on the wall—but there was always a chance that they or their belongings had been bugged (no pun intended, now or ever). It was always better to be on the cautious side.

Ahead of them, a dark-haired man in a light grey trenchcoat was crossing the street. _Gabriel?_

Someone bumped into Beelzebub, and they stumbled and barely caught themselves before they fell. The briefcase hit the ground. “Watch it,” they hissed, snatching it back up.

“My mistake,” said a woman in a spotted black raincoat, continuing past with barely a glance.

Beelzebub shook their head and kept walking. They hated cities. There were too many people, and they were all so careless…

And the briefcase in their hand was lighter than it had been a minute ago.

Stopping in the middle of the sidewalk, they flicked open the clasp and opened it just a crack. It was empty. Oh, she was _quick_.

Dropping the empty briefcase onto the curb, Beelzebub turned to chase after the woman. The spotted black raincoat caught their eye. As Beelzebub wove and shoved their way through passersby, they reached into their pocket, pulled out a pen, and uncapped it. The woman was holding a briefcase identical to the one Beelzebub had just thrown away. “You dropped something back there,” they said, coming up closer behind her and tapping her on the neck with the pen. Their thumb flicked the clip, and there was a click, then a puff of air, and a few moments later the woman collapsed on the sidewalk.

“Oh, bloody hell,” said a man next to them. “Is she alright?”

“She just fainted.” Beelzebub knelt down, ostensibly to check her pulse, and plucked the sleeping dart from her neck. They could have achieved the same effect with a simple miracle, of course, but then they wouldn’t get to use their fancy toys. “I’ll call someone to help,” they said to the man, picking up her briefcase and getting to their feet. They headed towards the phone booth at the corner, ducked inside, and opened the briefcase.

Empty.

Cursing, Beelzebub left that one in the phone booth and dashed outside. A silver car was pulling away from the curb close to where they’d left the unconscious woman. It was too late to chase them on foot. They probably expected Beelzebub to jump in a taxi, shout, “after them!” and trail them through London in a furious car chase which would undoubtedly leave them in a smoking wreck of a taxi with a terrified wreck of a driver, glaring through a cracked windshield and growling curses, and possibly covered in fruit. Instead, Beelzebub simply snapped their fingers, and all four of the car’s wheels suddenly deflated. The vehicle clattered to a stop.

They walked over, wrenched open the door, and pointed their umbrella at the driver like it was a gun, which, in fact, it was. “Where is it,” they demanded.

He raised his hands innocently, but his smile was anything but. “Too late, I’m afraid.”

Beelzebub’s jaw clenched. They considered shooting the man then and there, but there were too many witnesses around, and they had drawn too much attention already. Beelzebub slammed the door and turned in a circle scanning the streets behind their sunglasses. It didn’t make sense to move them from the car. If not for their demonic powers, Beelzebub would have had no easy way to catch up. Sure, it didn’t hurt to leave them with one more red herring, but it seemed unnecessary. At that point it would have been better to plan for contingencies, not an endless stream of bait-and-switches.

Unless whoever had planned this knew that Beelzebub could stop the car. _Gabriel. _Not a look-alike after all, then. Just a well-timed distraction. How, after millennia, did Beelzebub keep falling for that?

A moment’s concentration revealed Gabriel’s presence. He hadn’t gone far. He had only crossed the street. Ignoring the honking of the cars that slammed the brakes to avoid hitting them, Beelzebub sprinted across the street and down an alleyway.

Gabriel was standing just around a corner with an open folder in his hand, his eyes shut as if he was praying for a patience he did not possess. “Just please,” he said, opening his eyes as Beelzebub approached, “please, _please_ tell me you’re planning to double-cross the United States after you deliver these.”

Beelzebub stopped. “Of course.”

Gabriel shut the folder with a sigh of relief. “Thank God. I can never tell where you stand with the Russians nowadays.”

The Russian Revolution and its aftermath had been a confusing time for Beelzebub. It had been easy to throw their support behind the Romanovs, but it was difficult to justify opposing a revolution when that was the main reason they had supported the Colonies in the 1770s (Really, how were they supposed to know that Gabriel was also on their side? Rebellion was supposed to be heaven’s whole problem with the demons, and everyone upstairs had gotten pissy when Beelzebub invented self-determination in the beginning. They had no way to know that it wasn’t a hard and fast policy). Plus, most of what they’d heard about communism seemed decidedly good, until people tried putting it into practice and everything went haywire. Any government which led to that many food shortages and unexplained disappearances had to be evil, but Beelzebub hedged their bets, just to be sure. “I’m double-crossing them too.” They jabbed the umbrella at the folder. “That’s mine.”

“Oh, did you want this back?” Gabriel held it above his head. “Ask nicely.”

“Fuck you.”

He clucked his tongue disapprovingly. “Come get it yourself, then.”

Beelzebub would rather take a swim in holy water than embarrass themselves jumping up and down while Gabriel waved the folder just out of reach. “You owe me a favor.”

“And you really want to use it for this?”

He had a point. It would be a waste. Beelzebub folded their arms and glared at him.

“What are you doing in London, anyway?”

“Closer to Moscow,” said Beelzebub. “Easier to cross a channel than The Pond.”

“It’s your accent, isn’t it?”

With a sigh, Beelzebub shrugged. “Okay, so I fit in better here. Why are you here? Just stopped by to plan an elaborate scheme to steal a folder you didn’t know the contents of?”

“Well, I know them now, don’t I?” Gabriel tucked the documents into his trenchcoat. “I’m sure headquarters will be very happy when I hand them over.”

“Oh, _headquarters_.” Beelzebub snorted. “You don’t even know who I work for.”

Gabriel scowled. “I’m sure _the government_ will be even happier when I tip them off about a double agent in their midst.”

“Quadruple agent,” Beelzebub corrected him. “Why would they listen to you? You’re not with any intelligence agency.”

“You don’t know that.”

“You can’t be,” said Beelzebub. “It has ‘intelligence’ in the name.”

“Oh, very witty,” said Gabriel with one of his fake smiles. “How’d you get in, then?”

“Same way you didn’t.”

“Oho!” Gabriel barked out a laugh. “You’ve got a lot of sass, for someone who’s wiles just got thwarted.”

“They were hardly wiles,” said Beelzebub. “This is a hobby for me. I suppose I ought to thank you for making this war interesting.”

Gabriel blinked. “Me?”

“Wasn’t the atom bomb your doing?” asked Beelzebub. “Mutually Assured Destruction?”

“No,” said Gabriel. “Why would I want them to have weapons of mass destruction?”

Beelzebub shrugged. “It keeps them from outright violence. Seemed the sort of backwards, asinine thing you’d come up with.”

“But there is violence,” said Gabriel. “Vietnam—”

“Exactly,” said Beelzebub. “Asinine. If that wasn’t you, why haven’t you done anything about it?”

“What the hell would I do?” Gabriel snapped. “Neither side can stand each other, and they’re not going to stop until one’s been absolutely crushed, and the other cripples themselves in the process. I can’t make them see eye to eye when they look across the table and see an existential threat. I can’t even make them come to the table!” He was rambling now, suddenly terribly frustrated. “They’re all human, they’re the same—God, why is it so hard for them to see that they’re the same—”

He cut off abruptly, his hands frozen in the air where they had been gesticulating wildly. Closing them into fists, he shoved them back to his sides. He wouldn’t look at Beelzebub.

“You know,” said Beelzebub icily, “I believe it was your side that invented propaganda.”

Gabriel drew a furious breath. “That is not. What I meant.”

It was difficult for Beelzebub to see his face from this angle, but something was clearly happening there. Beelzebub stared. Was he having doubts?

“Get out of here, demon,” said Gabriel, waving a hand. “Go. Begone.”

Gabriel didn’t have doubts. He was too stupid, and much too stubborn. He was an angel, for hell’s sake.

“Sure.” Beelzebub stuffed their hands in your pockets. “Seems like you need to sort out your thoughts.”

His purple eyes flashed. “I do not—”

“—Have thoughts,” Beelzebub finished. “Right, I forgot.”

Gabriel didn’t _get_ to have doubts. Not this late into a game he had happily played along with for millennia.

“Enjoy the documents,” Beelzebub spat. “Hope they were worth it.”

“Worth what?” Gabriel asked as Beelzebub walked away. “_Worth what_, demon?”

He’d drive himself mad trying to figure out what it meant, whether Beelzebub had lured him here and let him catch them on purpose, and what unpleasant surprises might be waiting for him back home. Let him. For once, Beelzebub didn’t feel like sticking around to watch.


	12. 2006 A.D., New York, New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Beelzebub is furious, but for once, it isn't Gabriel's fault. Neither of them know what to do about this.

Gabriel woke with a start, his arms wheeling through the sheets in confusion. A hand on his chest pinned him against the bed. A carving knife glinted inches from his face, and two pale blue eyes shone like coins, burning with a fiery anger he had only ever seen flashes of before. “Where are they?” said a voice, low and sharp.

“What the hell, demon—”

_“Where are they?”_

Gabriel’s eyes flicked around the apartment, his mind racing. “Where are what?”

The hand pushed him back harder, and the cold knife blade touched his nose. “Lie to me, and I will cut that pretty face of yourzzz in half. _Where are my beezzz?_”

Gabriel’s heart hammered. The threats weren’t serious. They couldn’t be. “Why would I know? We agreed no discorporation—”

“We also agreed no more break-inzzz, but here I am.” Gabriel hadn’t heard Beelzebub buzz this much in centuries. “I’m not in the mood to honor agreementzzz. You’ve gone too far.”

“You literally killed me once.”

The eyes flashed. “I’ll do it again. Answer me.”

“I don’t know anything about your bees,” said Gabriel. “It’s not my fault if you’ve lost them—”

The knife stung against the bridge of his nose. “How _dare_ you!”

“Ow! I swear to God, Beelzebub, I never touched your bees,” he shouted, flinching away from the blade.

“You swear to…” The demon stopped. A moment later, the blade and the hand on Gabriel’s chest lifted. “It wazzzn’t you.”

“No, it wasn’t me,” said Gabriel. “What the hell would I want with your bees?”

Beelzebub drew a shuddering breath and put a hand to their forehead. The knife clattered to the floor as they leaned against the wall, their eyes empty in a different way than usual. They looked…lost. Small. Beelzebub had always been short, but they had never looked so small.

Gabriel sat up, miracled himself some proper clothes, and turned to sit on the edge of the bed with his feet on the floor. “They’ve been disappearing all over the country,” he said. “I saw something on the news. They’re calling it Collapsing Colony…something or other.”

“They juzzzt left,” murmured Beelzebub. There was something horribly wrong about the expression on their face. It didn’t belong there. “Left the queens behind, and…” they raised a hand and flicked their fingers.

A strange and unfamiliar feeling crawled in Gabriel’s chest, almost like pity. He felt he should say something, but wasn’t sure what. Sorry your bees are gone? Sorry you’ve got nobody to blame it on? “Couldn’t you just get more?” he tried. It was probably not the right option.

“Why,” Beelzebub snapped, “so those can fly off, too?”

Gabriel looked at the floor. He had never realized Beelzebub was so attached to their beehives. He hadn’t thought they could get attached to anything. “Look,” he said, after a moment’s thought, “this whole collapsing colony thing is on my list anyway. I’ll get to it sooner or later—”

“Good for you,” Beelzebub interrupted, picking up the knife from the floor. With a few more steps, they moved near the window and picked up something large and heavy on floor, surrounded by something glittery. Gabriel realized a moment later that the glittery stuff was shards of glass, and that one of his windows was broken.

“Come on, you didn’t have to do that,” he said, gesturing at the window in exasperation. How had he even slept through the crash? “I live on the twelfth floor, how did you even—”

The demon threw heavy thing, which might have been a brick, through a different window, shattering it as well. In the street below, a car alarm started to wail. “Really?” Gabriel burst out. “You could have used the door. Or the other window.”

“I’ll leave how I want,” Beelzebub muttered, clearing the broken glass from the windowsill with their bare hands. “Mind your business, Gabriel.”

“It’s my window.”

Ignoring him, Beelzebub jumped through.

With an impatient sigh, Gabriel got up to go stick his head out the window. It didn’t seem like Beelzebub to discorporate themselves intentionally, but he could never tell with them, and they had not been acting like themselves. There was no corpse sprawled on the street below, so Gabriel could only assume they had flown off safely. He waved a hand to stop the car alarm, then pulled his head in and fixed the windows.

He could already tell he wasn’t going to get much sleep tonight. It would be a problem for him, of course, since he slept more for the routine of it than because of any actual need for rest. Gabriel didn’t like being awake at night. He wanted to leave his apartment, wanted to change into his tracksuit and do a lap or three around Manhattan, but he didn’t like running in the dark ever since the tree roots on his regular jogging path had started mysteriously (well, not that mysteriously) changing and tripping him up if he wasn’t careful. There were plenty of other exercises he could do in the comfort of his own home, of course, but none of those cleared his head the way running did. That was what he needed right now.

Instead, he was stuck pacing his apartment, making a figure eight between the too-tall table near the kitchen (he would have gotten rid of the kitchen entirely, but had a vague idea that his lease wouldn’t allow it) and the too-short one next to the TV. He flicked on every light in the apartment to trick himself into thinking it was daylight. It didn’t work. He even sat for almost an hour and stared at the abstract black-and-white paintings on his wall, which he had never understood, but which he had been assured were revolutionary. The random lines and shapes offered him no more meaning now than they ever had.

The problem wasn’t that Gabriel couldn’t make sense of things. Things already made too much sense, and it might have been easier if they didn’t. The problem also wasn’t that he couldn’t figure out what he should or should not do.

What bothered him was that he had already made up his mind.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> I snap my fingers. The bees dissolve into dust. "We're in the endgame now."


	13. 2008 A.D., Long Island, New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Times are changing. They're coming to an end, for a start.  
Beelzebub finds an unexpected gift in their cabin, and does not react the way Gabriel hoped.

Beelzebub’s steps crunched up the walkway to the cabin. The door had a tendency to stick, and it took some effort to wrench it open. Stepping inside, they flung the now-empty basket against the wall, tramped into the bedroom, and face-planted into the mattress. That was that, then. The antichrist was on Earth. And the thought made Beelzebub feel absolutely nothing.

They hadn’t felt much in a while, to be honest. It was like those early days, when havoc and death and even torture had lost its edge, and life on Earth was nothing but endless, unbearable tedium. Before they and Gabriel had gotten into a regular rhythm of thwarting each other. Before they had taken up beekeeping.

Beelzebub had never realized what a difference the bees made until they were gone. There was no more pleasant hum behind the cabin to sand out the sharp edges of their own thoughts. No more ridiculous quantities of honey lining the shelves for whenever Beelzebub needed a jolt of sugar to break up the monotony. As carefully as they had rationed the honey, it had only lasted until a few months ago. The bees themselves had been gone for almost two years now. It seemed like a lot longer.

None of that mattered anymore, they supposed. In a decade or so, the son of their dark master would come into his power and lay waste to this world, and then the trumpets would sound and the hosts of heaven and hell would come forth to the plains of Megiddo to settle things once and for all. Whichever side won the ensuing war, all of the things they had enjoyed on Earth would be gone. They didn’t have beehives, fruits, or strategy board games in hell. They were fairly certain they didn’t have those in heaven, either. Losing the bees now just meant they wouldn’t have to do it again later on.

Taking a deep breath, Beelzebub closed their eyes and let unconsciousness claim them. They didn’t sleep much, at least not regularly, but the naps they did take tended to stretch on for weeks, sometimes even months. They could already tell this was going to be a long one.

They dreamed they were walking through hell, but the ever-crowded halls were now completely empty. There was not a demon in sight, and their footsteps echoed too loudly in the alien silence. Every office door was open. They looked inside Dagon’s as they passed. The hellsharks were gone from the aquarium, and the blue light shining through the water formed eerie, shifting patterns on the walls and floor. Beelzebub shut the door and kept walking. In one of the open office spaces which were plentiful in hell, a pipe was dripping down onto a soggy pile of abandoned forms. Beelzebub considered going to see what the forms were, but for some reason they were terrified of touching the water.

They continued down the hall until they reached a set of heavy, iron-studded double doors, inlaid with thousands of human teeth. Beyond was the meeting room of the Dark Council, and the throne of Lucifer himself. Only the seven princes of hell were supposed to pass this point, but there was nobody here to stop Beelzebub. They stepped forward and placed a hand on each door.

“You’re not supposed to be here.”

They turned to see Crowley slouching against a wall behind them, his red hair in long curls like it had been in the beginning. He frowned at Beelzebub, uncharacteristically silent.

“Where is everyone?” they asked.

Crowley nodded at the ceiling. “It’s starting. You ought to join them.”

Beelzebub felt themselves begin to rise off the floor. Something was buzzing in the distance. “Then why are you still here?” they called after Crowley, but before they could hear the answer they were shooting up through layers of molten iron and nickel and magnesium, through rock and then dirt and then sand.

The buzzing grew louder until it was almost deafening, and then suddenly they were standing in the desert in the middle of a swarm of bees. Gabriel was standing in front of them, gesturing wildly at the cloud of insects. “They’re the same,” he was shouting over the buzz. “Can’t they see they’re—”

He stopped, choked, and collapsed. Michael pulled her sword out of his back and turned to Beelzebub.

They jolted awake, and the blood suddenly rushed to their head and made it pound. They shivered, sticky with cold sweat. Squinting against the headache, they buried their face in the mattress, struggled to breathe through it, and let the droning of the bees outside lull them into a calmer state.

Their eyes flew open. There shouldn’t have been bees outside.

Beelzebub jumped out of bed and stood stone-still to listen. It was definitely bees. Real, healthy, living bees. Perhaps the old colonies had come back—but no, that was stupid, individual bees only lived for a few weeks, and the colony couldn’t have persisted without a queen. Maybe they were still dreaming, but they didn’t think their unconscious mind could replicate the hum of a beehive this perfectly. Retrieving the rifle from the closet in the hall and taking a moment to load it, Beelzebub stepped outside.

Three new hives stood in almost exactly the same formation as the old ones, and the bees buzzed and flew and crawled along the outside in almost exactly the same way. Almost. But these were brand-new hives, and brand-new bees, as evidenced by the suspicious way some of the workers investigated Beelzebub as they approached. A few of them bumped their heads against the demon’s skin as a warning. Beelzebub let off a wave of demonic energy to frighten them away, and stepped close to the hive. A note was pinned to the outside of the nearest one. Beelzebub ripped it off to read it:

_Now we’re even. –G._

Fury burned through Beelzebub’s veins such as they seldom remembered feeling. They crumbled the note in their fist and set their whole hand on fire, crushing the paper until their fingernails bit into their skin and the ashes flaked between their fingers.

The buzzing around them stopped.

Silence rang in their ears. The nerve, the absolute nerve of that angel. Even Beelzebub would never have struck so low. With one shaking, soot-stained hand, they pulled a cell phone out of their pocket, flipped it open, and dialed Gabriel’s number. It rang twice before it was answered. “That’s a pretty sick joke, Gabe,” Beelzebub hissed before the other person could speak.

“Beelzebub?” said Gabriel’s voice on the other end. “How did you even get this number?”

“I hope you’re proud of yourself,” said Beelzebub. “You know what? You win.”

“What?”

“You win,” Beelzebub spat into the phone. “I can’t top this. So, congratulations. And if I ever see your face again, I will wipe it from the face of the Earth. Understand?”

_“What?”_

“How many times are you going to make me say it? _You win_. Everything’s over soon, anyway. It doesn’t matter anymore.”

“Beelzebub—”

They snapped the phone shut before he could finish. It started to vibrate, and they opened it, broke it in half along the hinge, and hurled the pieces as far as they could into the trees. Then their knees folded and they were kneeling on the ground in the middle of the silent beehives, clutching their head as blood pulsed painfully through it.

Miles away, an angel looked at his smartphone and wondered just what the hell that had been about.

Gabriel stepped cautiously around the cabin to find Beelzebub lying faceup in the middle of the hives, surrounded by the husks of dead bees. He drew a sharp breath, looking around at the destruction. “Jesus, Beelzebub—”

“Don’t bring him into it,” Beelzebub snapped without raising their head. The rifle on the ground next to them became a handgun when they picked it up. They aimed in the direction of Gabriel’s voice and fired two shots. “Go away.”

Gabriel tensed as the bullets whizzed past him, but didn’t step back. “We agreed.”

“The game’zzzzzz _over_, Gabe, weren’t you lizzztening?” The gun clicked the next time Beelzebub pulled the trigger, and they threw it at Gabriel instead.

He ducked. “I’ll talk from here, then.”

“I didn’t say _stop_, I zzzaid _go away_,” Beelzebub said through gritted teeth. “Did you come to gloat? Come to rub it in a little more?”

“Could we just back up a few steps?” said Gabriel, holding up his hands. With one arm, he waved at all the dead beehives. “What happened here?”

“Azz if you don’t know,” buzzed the demon. “Did you think I’d just accept this from you? I’d open myself up to whatever—whatever trapzz you hid in them? We’re _enemiezzz_.”

“Traps?” Gabriel repeated. “There were no—”

“It’s messed up,” Beelzebub went on. “Juzzt dropped them here without a warning, right where the old onezzz were—Don’t play dumb, no matter how convincing you are at that. You knew damn well what you were doing.”

Gabriel had not considered that angle. He should have known Beelzebub would interpret it as a hostile gesture. Every interaction they had was at least a little bit hostile. However Gabriel had meant it, to Beelzebub it was a jab at a wound that had still not completely scabbed over. “I owed you. I was just paying my debts.”

“Like hell you were,” snapped Beelzebub. “This doezzzn’t make us even.”

“What?” Gabriel bent forward in disbelief. “I fixed Colony Collapse Disorder. You have no idea how much trouble—”

“Gabriel,” Beelzebub interrupted. _“I can’t pay this back.”_

Gabriel’s eyes widened. He had made a mistake.

“What the _heaven_,” hissed Beelzebub, raising another gun that had come from nowhere, “were you thinking?”

“It wasn’t—You weren’t acting like yourself,” Gabriel blurted out, stepping backwards. When Beelzebub didn’t immediately shoot them, he took it as a sign to keep talking. “You haven’t been since the bees left. I thought maybe…” He drew a deep breath, then let it out. “You got me back on my feet after I fell down that cliff. I tried to repay the favor. That’s all.”

Beelzebub said nothing. Slowly, they lowered the gun.

“Not that it matters now, I guess,” Gabriel added, grimacing at the dead bees. “So forget it.”

Beelzebub didn’t speak for a long moment. Gabriel thought they might have fallen asleep. Then they muttered, “Yeah. Nothing does anymore.”

Gabriel swallowed. “You said something like that over the phone,” he remembered. “What did you mean?”

“What do you think I meant?”

Gabriel swallowed and sat down on the ground. He had been worried about that. It seemed too soon. Sure, it had been six millennia, but he had expected at least another few centuries. “The kid’s here?”

“Yeah,” said Beelzebub. “I dropped him off myself.”

“So it’s starting?”

“No. Ending.”

Gabriel swallowed. “How soon?”

“Eleven years.”

Gabriel looked around at the ground and the trees and tried to imagine it not being there anymore. No more crisp tailored suits with a lilac tie to bring out his eyes, even though among the humans he ought to have been trying to hide them. No more early morning jogs when the birds are just starting to come out and the air is fresh and cool. No more physical body to stretch the limits of, no blood to feel pumping through him and no muscles to tense and burn as he ran. Just pure, endless white light. Gabriel ran a hand through his hair and muttered, “Dammit, Beelzebub.”

“This wazzn’t my call,” said the demon irritably. “It is written. What was I gonna do, kill the antichrist? Thwart God’zzz ineffable plan?”

“You’ve certainly had enough experience with thwarting,” Gabriel muttered. He frowned at the grass. “We both have.”

“It was a good run, I guess.” Beelzebub turned their head to look at Gabriel. “Like you said that time, you were a worthy—”

“Would that work?”

For a moment there was silence. Beelzebub stared at Gabriel with growing anger. “No,” they said slowly, over-emphasizing as if it was some kind of sarcastic joke. “The boy’s father would sense it right away.” They turned to look at the sky.

Gabriel’s mind raced. “Then maybe something else. Could he be convinced to leave Earth alone? He’s just a baby now. With the right upbringing—”

“No,” Beelzebub repeated, with millennia of weariness behind their voice. “I cannot believe I even need to say this, but you cannot outwit the Almighty. Take it from me. I’ve tried.”

“What do you mean, you’ve tried?”

With a sigh, the demon moved their head to look at him again. “Noah’s ark? The fruit of knowledge? The _Rebellion_? It all just gets wrapped up into Her little plan. You can’t beat Her at Her own game.”

Gabriel shivered. He wasn’t challenging God’s authority. Not really. It wasn’t anything personal against Her, like the Rebellion had been. He just wanted the Earth to stick around a little longer. “She is all-knowing,” he said, speaking slowly. “And everything that has ever happened has been part of the Great Plan. Including acts of demonic rebellion.”

“That’s what I just said.”

“So if everything that happens is part of Her plan,” Gabriel went on, “then by definition, if we were to try to avert Armageddon, that would also…”

“You always had a talent for rationalizzzation,” said Beelzebub sarcastically. “It won’t work. It never works”

“You don’t know that,” said Gabriel. “You don’t know the plan. Even I don’t know the plan. Look, we’ve spent so long trying to get in each other’s way. What do you think we could accomplish if we worked together for once?”

“Nothing,” Beelzebub snapped. “Go ahead and get yourself killed if you want. Leave me out of it.”

Gabriel got to his feet, scowling down at the demon. “And what are you gonna do? Lay in a pile of dead bees and feel sorry for yourself for the next eleven years? Well, knock yourself out.” He shook his head and turned to leave. “I never took you for a quitter, Beelzebub.”

Grimacing at the ground, he crunched over the bodies of the bees he had taken such pains to transport. Typical Beelzebub. He shouldn’t have said anything. Why would they agree to work with him? After six thousand years of enmity, they’d probably both fall back into their old habits and start tripping each other up. The demon would only get in his way. It was for the best that he work alone.

He glanced back only once, and saw Beelzebub in the exact same position, laying in the middle of the beehives, staring listlessly at the sky. Absolutely unconcerned. Furious, he turned around. A century ago he might have agreed that trying to go against God’s plan was impossible. He might even have agreed five years ago. But that was before he had stood before the Metatron with a presentation clicker in one hand and been told that bees did not feature prominently enough in what remained of the Great Plan for it to matter whether they lived or died, but that since he had raised the issue, She had decided on a whim to tip the scales in their favor. It may be written, but it was not set in stone. Granted, saving the bees was much more trivial than saving the entire world, but it had to be worth a try. He didn’t know if he could stand an eternity in heaven, with those bland white robes and incorporeal forms and the endless whiteness that made him feel so very small.

Head Office would not mind, he was sure. He was just thwarting another demonic plan. He couldn’t really claim he was doing that if he and the demon started working together. It would have been nice not to be alone in this, of course. And it would have been nice to have a second head working on the plan, particularly one as, frankly, bizarre as Beelzebub’s. They could find angles Gabriel never could on his own, and even if most of them didn’t make sense, a few were bound to be brilliant. The demon would have been useful.

But no. He snapped his fingers and the walls of his apartment replaced the trees around him. It didn’t matter. He’d do this by himself.

“_Quitter_,” Beelzebub spat at the sky after Gabriel had left. “Arrogant prick. Doesn’t know what he’s talking about.”

Gabriel would think differently if he’d ever once been on the wrong side of the Great Plan. That was the problem with angels. They were so naïve. It had taken Gabriel six thousand years to do anything other than blindly follow orders. Beelzebub had spent almost that long learning that sometimes that was the only thing you could do. Gabriel was going to get himself killed, or worse. Beelzebub was just thankful they had the good sense to stay out of it.

“Quitter,” they hissed, when they finally picked themselves up off the ground and went back into the cabin the following morning. There wasn’t much to do now except wait a few years for the child to grow up and figure out how to get close to him to influence him to the side of darkness. Unless they just…didn’t. But then hell would just send someone else to raise the boy, and Beelzebub would be executed. Whatever they did, it would turn out the same. It was written.

Was it quitting to be smart? To choose self-preservation over suicide? Maybe there had been a time when Beelzebub had leapt to challenge the Powers that Be, but that was a long time ago, and they had never stopped paying the price. When forces too powerful to comprehend started moving their pawns across the board, was it quitting to sit back and let them?

Beelzebub opened a cabinet and pulled out a jar of honey. Not one from their own hives, of course. Those had already run out, but sometimes cravings hit, so they had stocked the shelves with store-bought stuff instead. Funny, that after all this time they still hadn’t gotten sick of honey. They unscrewed the lid, scooped out a spoonful, and wiped the thin trail it left behind on the lip of the jar even knowing that the entire jar would be sticky soon anyway. It wasn’t quite the same. This honey was too smooth, too processed, with more notes of clover than of the wildflowers their bees had fed on. And it always tasted sweeter when Beelzebub had harvested it with their own hands.

They glanced out the window at the new beehives, wishing they hadn’t killed all the bees. Wishing Gabriel hadn’t signed his name to that note, and left them with no choice. As much as they missed having bees, as much as they might have wanted to keep the new hives, they couldn’t accept them from Gabriel. He should have known that. And it hurt to look out and see the dead hives standing there as mausoleums to the insects inside, the kind of hurt that a demon wasn’t supposed to feel. But it was for the best. If they had kept the new bees, it would have hurt just as much when they died in fire and flame eleven years down the road.

_Quitter._

Beelzebub’s eye twitched. They screwed the lid back on the honey and replaced it in the cabinet. It was their own fault for getting so attached to life on Earth. If they hadn’t spent so much time enjoying themselves, it would be easier to leave. They didn’t intend to spend the next eleven years in continuation of that mistake. Really, they should have just stayed in hell to begin with. It was dull down there, but they could have occupied themselves with political scheming, climbing the ranks, maybe ousting Crowley and taking his position as prince. That might have satisfied them. Except they had given up on that, too.

But that never would have panned out, either. Trying would have been a waste of time. Beelzebub was just saving their efforts.

Saving them for…what?

The demon pressed their knuckles into the edge of the cabinet. There were eleven years left until the Earth was destroyed. Eleven years that they would spend following orders, and trying to ease the transition from life on Earth, which meant doing almost nothing else. They could probably sleep through most of it, except that the bizarre nightmares would probably ruin that, too. They had no bees to look after, and refused to get any more. And it wasn’t worth trying to thwart Gabriel when he was already doomed to fail. Beelzebub shut their eyes. Eleven years. Plus eternity after that. What was there to do?

Three days later, Beelzebub stood in front of an apartment door, grinding their teeth. They raised a hand to knock, thought better of it, and kicked the door open. A little demonic help sent it flying off its hinges. Inside, Gabriel shouted, “What—”

He ran into the living room and stopped when he saw Beelzebub standing there. His face darkened. “What do you want?”

Beelzebub’s hands were clenched into fists behind their back. Without looking straight at Gabriel, they drew a deep breath. “Do you have a plan.”

Gabriel stood there a moment, then said, “Part of one.”

“Probably rubbish.” Beelzebub strode inside without waiting for an invitation, stepping over the door and snapping to miracle it back into place behind them. Blackboards stood against the walls of the living room, scrawled with diagrams that seemed part business plan, part football play. Beelzebub wasn’t sure. They only had a vague idea of how either of those worked. “Throw it out. We’ll start from scratch.”

“That’s…not what I meant when I said to use the door,” Gabriel said.

“Do you want my help or not?”

Gabriel swallowed, sighed, looked around the apartment in exasperation. For a moment, Beelzebub thought he was going to ask them to leave. Then he picked up a piece of chalk and pointed to one of his sleek, too-modern-to-be-comfortable chairs. “It isn’t _rubbish_,” he said, mimicking Beelzebub’s accent on the last word. “Sit down. I’ll explain what I have so far, and we can go from there.”

Beelzebub sat down in what was, as far as they were concerned, only an abstract representation of a chair. “Explain what you have so far, and I’ll see if I can help you salvage it.”

Gabriel rolled his eyes, but turned to the first chalkboard and started walking Beelzebub through his plan. As they listened, they slouched as much as the so-called chair would allow, totally apathetic to any casual observer but still taking in every detail. Neither made any reference to their last conversation. Beelzebub would have been grateful for that, but he guessed Gabriel was just as disinclined to mention it as they were.

The next six hours were spent arguing, volleying insults back and forth, occasionally throwing chalk, and at one point, Gabriel banging his head against the wall for a solid ten minutes. At the end of it, they had twice as many chalkboards as they had started with and nearly as many whiteboards (though they realized too late that the markers Gabriel had procured from his desk were permanent), several of Gabriel’s chair-like sculptures had been replaced with neon-colored bean bags, and, for reasons that surely made sense at the time, one entire wall was bright yellow. And they had finally managed to hash out something that might have been called a plan. At a stretch, with a great deal of luck and willpower, it might even work.

Beelzebub returned to the cabin feeling more alive than they had in years. They had almost forgotten how much fun it could be to plan a thwarting, and they’d never shared it with anyone else before. Granted, working with Gabriel was going to be anything but easy, but the next eleven years were at least bound to be interesting. Considering that those years might be their last, it was really the best they could hope for.

They paused in the kitchen, looking out the window at the empty hives. It wouldn’t hurt to give themselves a little extra motivation to save the Earth. They walked outside and stood between the three boxes, setting their hands on two of them, and then hesitated. There again was that pain in their chest that demons weren’t supposed to have. This might be a huge mistake. But they did so miss having bees. And, anyway if they failed, it wouldn’t matter much anyway.

Closing their eyes and gritting their teeth a little with the effort, Beelzebub pushed more miracles than a demon should ever have used in one go through their fingertips. The hives started to buzz again.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Yeah, so I'm not about to pretend to be both Neil Gaiman and Terry Pratchett and rewrite the entire plot of Good Omens with these two. Aziraphale and Crowley were so tangential to the main story that it would probably go about the same, except with a lot more attempted (or actual) murder. Anyway, this is a long-winded was of saying we're gonna just skip to the end of Armageddon after this.


	14. 2019 A.D., New York, New York

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The very first day of the rest of their lives.

The chains on Beelzebub’s wrists rattled as they walked into the courtroom, glaring silently at everything around them. Behind a grimy window crowded hundreds of demons, moaning and calling for the traitor’s death. A massive printout of Beelzebub in a beekeeping suit with “BEEelzeBUZZ” printed underneath in orange comic sans had been pinned to the wall on their right. Beelzebub’s face twitched a little as they looked at it.

Dagon’s lips pulled over her pointed teeth in a sneer as she looked down from her elevated chair. “The prisoner shall approach.”

Beelzebub stepped forward without a word, scowling at Dagon. Next to her, Ligur growled, “You’re going down, Beelzebub.”

Beelzebub looked down at their small body and muttered, “I don’t have that much farther to go.”

Ligur blinked, taken aback, and glanced at Hastur, whose face was screwed up in confusion. “Was…was that a joke?” asked Hastur.

Ligur stepped forward to stand menacingly over Beelzebub. “Explain the joke.”

“Everything will be explained soon,” Dagon barked. “The trial shall begin with evidence, and end with complete destruction.” They leaned forward, lacing their fingers together. “Anything to say before we begin?”

“Yeah.” Beelzebub pointed at the poster on the wall beside them. “What the _hell_ is that?”

Gabriel smiled blankly at the collection of angels in front of him. “Good of you all to come see me off,” he said, nodding at each of them. “And, of course, Michael. Always a pleasure.”

Michael ignored him. “Sandalphon, what’s the status of our new associate?”

“On his way.”

“New associate?” Gabriel gave a forced laugh. “That sounds fun. So who’s your new friend? Do I get to meet him?”

“Gabriel,” said Michael sternly. “Please, stop talking.”

Gabriel looked down at his wrists, tied to the arms of the chair. “You kidnapped me, physically dragged me here, and tied me up, and you think I’ll shut up because you asked nicely?”

“I had hoped.” Michael snapped her fingers and a gag appeared over Gabriel’s mouth. “This will work just as well, though. Nobody will benefit from the words of a traitor.”

“The joke,” Beelzebub said through their teeth, “wazzz that I’m low to the ground. So, not far to go, if down izzz the direction where I’m going.”

Hastur’s face cleared and he began to laugh hysterically. His whole body shook from the force of it. “Thank you, Beelzebub,” said Dagon, shooting irritated looks at Hastur and Ligur. “Let us move forward with the presentation of evidence. Hastur, if you would—”

Hastur was too incapacitated by laughter to present any evidence. “I could be the prosecutor instead, your honor,” said Ligur. “I don’t actually understand what my role is.”

“I told you,” said Dagon, pounding a fist on the arm of the chair. “You’re here in case there’s anything. They’ve done. That we’ve forgot!”

Beelzebub watched all this with their eyebrows raised. “I see you’re running a tight ship, Dagon. Azzz alwayzzzzzzzz.”

“Having some trouble with that little speech tic, Beelzebuzz?” said Dagon with a sharp-toothed grin. “You might control it better if you didn’t talk at all.”

Beelzebub opened their mouth, seemed to think better of it, and settled for an icy glare instead.

“Now,” said Dagon, looking around the courtroom impatiently. “If we could please move on.”

“Don’t get a view like this in the basement.” A demon walked up from behind Gabriel and emptied a cauldron of hellfire into the circle of stones on the floor. The angels, except Gabriel, flinched as a column of flame blazed to life, swirling in a violent inferno up to the incalculably high ceiling. Gabriel tilted their head to give the angels on the other side an unimpressed look.

“Michael, I believe you’ve made your point,” said Aziraphale, his hands fluttering nervously. “Gabriel gets the message. Surely we don’t actually have to—”

“Thanks to your treason,” Michael said to Gabriel, speaking over him, “Armageddon must be rescheduled. A plan six thousand years in the making. I think it’s only right that we remove you. Wouldn’t you agree?”

Gabriel didn’t answer. He couldn’t, thanks to the gag.

Sandalphon stepped forward and tugged the ropes from Gabriel’s wrists. “On your feet.”

Gabriel stood, reached up, and pulled the gag down. “Cooperating with demons, just to kill me? Is all this really necessary?”

“The archangel Michael just explained her reasons,” said Sandalphon. “Weren’t you _listening?_”

“I’m sure you understand, Gabriel,” said Michael with a sweet smile. “We cannot let treason stand.” She gestured to the fire. “Now, if you would.”

“Uriel?” said Beelzebub, as the angel came around the corner, a glass pitcher in her hands.

“Good of you to join us,” said Dagon, grinning. “I see you have the stuff.”

Uriel acted like she hadn’t heard. She nodded at the chipped porcelain bathtub in the back of the room. “In there?”

“Well, you could just dump it over their head,” said Dagon. “But I’m told you angels don’t like to dirty your own hands.”

Uriel upended the pitcher into the tub. The water sloshed out the other side and a few droplets fell onto the floor. On the other side of the room, the demons flinched back. “I’ll be back for it.”

“I’m sure.” Dagon flicked her fingers at Uriel to dismiss her. She took the empty pitcher and returned down the hallway. “Well, Beelzebub? Any final words?”

“Juzzzt one.” Beelzebub glared up at the three demons in front of them, then back through the window at the hordes behind them. They all waited. Beelzebub did not go on.

“Well?” demanded Ligur.

Beelzebub still didn’t say anything.

Hastur stepped forward, furious. “Are you _stalling?_”

They shrugged.

“Step into the water now, Beelzebub,” said Dagon. “Or we shall have to use force.”

“Alright, I’m going,” Beelzebub knelt down. “Just let me take my shoes off first.”

“This is your final warning,” said Gabriel, giving all the angels a stern look.

“That’s what we’re meant to be saying to you,” said Sandalphon. “Gabriel—”

“Gabriel,” said Michael in that warning tone of voice.

Gabriel smiled broadly at them. “It is fun saying my name, isn’t it?”

Aziraphale was standing behind the other two archangels and avoiding looking at Gabriel. “Michael,” he said in a very small voice. “Are you quite sure—”

“You.” Gabriel snapped his fingers. “Look at me. If you’re going to burn me in hellfire, you could at least have the decency to watch.”

Startled, Aziraphale raised his head. His face writhed, but he didn’t look away again.

“Well, then.” Gabriel fixed a tight smile on his face and folded his hands behind his back. “You leave me no choice.”

Sandalphon stepped forward, “That’s what we’re meant to be—”

“Hush,” Michael shushed him.

Still smiling, Gabriel stepped into the flames.

Dagon gripped the arms of the throne. “That’s not possible.”

“No!” shouted Hastur. “Get them out of there. They’re only one demon. We can torture them in other ways—”

“Stand down,” insisted Ligur. “We don’t know what else they may be capable of.”

Behind the glass, the gasps of the disbelieving demons turned to shrieks. Against all the laws of creation, Beelzebub was standing barefoot in ankle-deep holy water, completely unharmed. They threw a challenging look about the room, then turned to stare at Dagon. Her eyes widened. She leaned back against the throne as if she could phase through it and escape the entire situation.

“Izzz that all?” asked Beelzebub in a bored tone. “Can I go now?”

“Now,” said Gabriel, as he stepped through the column of flame and out the other side, hellfire clinging to his suit and burning orange behind his usually-purple eyes. “I bet you didn’t see this one coming.”

The other angels’ expressions revealed that they did not. Michael pushed Sandalphon and Aziraphale back and spread her arms to shield them. “What is he?” asked Sandalphon, all but cowering behind her. Michael just shook her head, staring at Gabriel in horror.

His teeth bared in a grin, Gabriel fixed his hellishly burning eyes on Michael. He took one step forward. Then another.

She scurried back, terrified.

Gabriel stopped. His smile widened, and the purple of his eyes shone through in triumph. He raised one burning hand, considered it thoughtfully, and then looked back at the archangel.

She swallowed. “Gabriel,” she said, her voice shaking, “please—”

He tilted his head and closed his hand into a fist. The fire along his body flickered and died, until he was standing there just as before in his ordinary grey turtleneck. “Well,” he said in a nonchalant tone, “since you asked so nicely.”

The three angels breathed a collective sigh of relief. “What _is_ he?” Sandalphon asked again.

“Something you shouldn’t mess with,” said Gabriel. “I’ll see myself out, shall I?”

The sun shone bright over Central Park, so bright that passersby quickly retreated into the shade of the trees to avoid it. Ducks bobbed along the sparkling surface of the lake, migrating towards a woman who had just sat down on a bench with a loaf of bread and torn off a piece. On another side of the lake, an angel and a demon sat on opposite sides of a bench. “Well,” said the angel, flexing his fingers as he settled comfortably back into his own body, “I think that went about as well as could be expected.”

The demon shot him a glance. They were going to miss standing so tall. From Gabriel’s urgency to switch back, it seemed that he had missed it as well. “Apart from all the fire,” they said.

“That was not my fault,” said Gabriel.

“And the screaming. And the speaking in tongues.”

“That was only partially my fault. Still, it all worked out.” Gabriel cast glanced up at the sunny blue sky. “How did things go up there?”

A wicked grin broke across Beelzebub’s face as they remembered the terror of the angels when they walked out of the hellfire. “It was beautiful. You should have seen Michael’s face.”

“How shocked was she?”

“Shocked?” Beelzebub scoffed. “Give me some credit, Gabe. She was _terrified_.”

Gabriel leaned back against the bench and muttered, “Wish I could have seen that.”

“She did better than the others,” Beelzebub went on. “That guy with the bowtie, and the bald one with the brown suit—”

“Sandalphon? Did he have gold teeth?”

Beelzebub shrugged. “I didn’t get a good look at his face. He was hiding behind Michael.”

Gabriel laughed savagely. “Bet he wasn’t so smug then. Serves him right. Overblown pigeon. I can’t believe I missed that.”

Beelzebub looked at Gabriel with raised eyebrows, wondering how long he had been repressing that. “I’ll try to get it on video next time,” they said sarcastically. “But I don’t think you’ll be hearing from them for a long while. How were things downstairs?”

Gabriel’s nose wrinkled. “Smelly.”

“That’s the brimstone.”

“Figured. They also had some very interesting décor. There were these posters…”

“Oh?” said Beelzebub. “And _did_ you try licking the walls?”

“What?” Gabriel looked mystified. “No I didn’t—Why would I—Is that something demons do?”

“No, we’re not allowed. What posters, then?”

“They must have had them specially made.” Gabriel took a deep breath and then added, “Beelze_buzz_.”

Beelzebub groaned and put their head in their hands. They should have known Dagon would make good on her threat. Holy water aside, they were suddenly very glad they had been spared the ordeal of the trial. “Just tell me you didn’t let Crowley call you ‘Bee.’”

“He wasn’t there,” said Gabriel. “Must have known you were planning to blackmail him.”

“Smart,” said Beelzebub, nodding.

Across the lake, another parkgoer had just sat down with another loaf of bread. The ducks split away from the first woman and started drifting towards him. Somewhere else, a flock of pigeons burst into the air to escape a toddler who was harassing them. Beelzebub’s hand twitched, and the child tripped, skinned his knee, and started wailing. Gabriel winced at the noise, and a moment later, the child shut his mouth and looked down at his knee, which had surely been bleeding just a second ago.

“Can’t believe it’s all still here,” Beelzebub murmured.

“Of course it is,” said Gabriel proudly. “That was some first-class thwarting we did back there.”

Beelzebub wasn’t so sure. The Almighty’s plans had a way of twisting into a new shape and cropping up where you least expected it. For once, though, they couldn’t complain.

Gabriel started, looking across the lake. Beelzebub followed his gaze and froze. Both of them stared across the lake at a familiar tuft of red hair and a cloud of white-blond curls. Gabriel raised a finger to point. “Is that…?”

“I think it is.”

“But what are they—”

Beelzebub swallowed. “Looking for us?”

They watched the unlikely pair for a moment, then turned to look at each other. “We should go,” said Beelzebub scrambling to their feet.

“Yeah.”

Beelzebub shoved their hands in their pockets as they crunched down the wide gravel path. They frowned at the sky as the path left the trees and entered a stretch of sun, and a cloud outran the wind to give them a bit more shade.

“I suppose you’ll be getting back to your bees,” said Gabriel.

“If they really are back,” said the demon. “You’d better not be lying about that.”

“About something so serious? Beelzebub, I am _injured_.”

Beelzebub looked at him sidelong, unable to tell if he was being sarcastic or not. “And I guess you’ll be getting back to your bland apartment, with that hideous abstract art.”

They waited for Gabriel’s biting reply, but it didn’t come. He was looking at the ground, his forehead wrinkled. “It’s weird,” he said after a moment, “not having any blessings or miracles scheduled. No more wars to avert. What do we even do?”

A smile spread across Beelzebub’s face and they cackled with delight. Gabriel flinched the way he always did when they started to laugh. Beelzebub ignored him, tipping their head back as the laughter bubbled up from their lungs and wracked its way up their throat. A weight that had been there since before the Beginning lifted from their chest. They had no more orders. No higher-ups were calling the shots. No one was controlling them, telling them where to go, what to do, how to act. For the first time in their life, nobody else was pulling the strings. They were free.

“Gabriel,” they said, looking at him with a half-crazed grin. “We can do _whatever we want_.”


	15. Epilogue

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> The first day of the rest of THEIR lives.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Thank you so, SO much to everyone who read this nonsense all the way to the end! This was such a blast to write, not least because of the lovely kudos and comments encouraging me along the way, so an extra thank to anyone who left those. Now, I think it's high time for some ineffable husbands. It's too cruel to just leave them in a world where they never meet, and I don't have that in me.

On the other side of the park, a different demon lounged on a bench, watching the ducks through dark lenses and waiting for his heavenly counterpart to show her face. As this failed Armageddon business was bad news for both their sides, it only made sense that they should work together to fix it, or at least to find a successful way to punish their scapegoats. Crowley just wished it didn’t have to be _Michael_. She had personally seen to the fall of too many demons. Crowley had not been one of them, but in a way, that was worse. Hearing the stories secondhand somehow made her seem even more terrifying. Plus, from his very limited interactions with her, he could already tell she was an absolute wanker.

Someone else sat down on the other end of the bench, and Crowley turned his head lazily, then stopped. “Hello,” said an angel, folding his hands primly across his lap. “You must be my, er, new associate.”

Crowley looked the new angel over for a moment, taking in the beige jacket, the halo of curly white hair, and the blue tartan bow tie. “You’re not Michael.”

“Afraid not.”

Crowley turned back to watching the ducks. “Wank-wings too busy to come herself? Typical. Too important to meet with a lowly _prince of hell_, so she sends…” he waved a hand at the angel.

“Aziraphale,” said the angel, with a polite nod. “I volunteered, actually.”

“Now, why would you want to do that,” Crowley asked flatly. Angels were all the same. Same stupid sense of duty. Same utter lack of creativity. Same haughtiness and holier-than-thou attitude, which, even if it was technically true, didn’t make it any less insufferable.

The angel picked nervously at the cloth of his jacket. “To tell the truth,” he muttered, as if he was hoping Crowley wouldn’t hear. “I was rather fond of Gabriel.”

Crowley turned to look at Aziraphale, eyebrows raised. He had expected a short treatise on the importance of duty, possibly with an attached list of all the better things Michael had to do at the moment. “What?”

Aziraphale cast him a fleeting glance. “Well, I don’t think he had many friends upstairs,” he went on. “He was a bit odd, certainly, and always a bit much, but he always seemed so convinced he was doing the right thing. I’m sure in his mind—”

“You’re trying to exonerate him?”

Uncertainty writhed across the angel’s features. It really was painfully easy to read his every emotion. “At the very least he deserves a chance to defend himself,” said Aziraphale. “He, er…he didn’t really get one when we brought him in.”

An angel who cared. Crowley hadn’t seen that one coming. How…novel.

Aziraphale’s eyes flicked toward Crowley again. Realizing he had been staring, Crowley turned hurriedly back to the ducks.

“He’s been acting odd for a while,” Aziraphale went on. “I warned Michael that there was something up with him. I wish she’d just talked to him about it. There was that bizarre obsession with the bees—”

“Bees?” Crowley repeated. “Y’mean the striped buzzy things?” He wiggled his fingers through the air to mimic their flight.

“Those are the ones,” said Aziraphale, nodding. “He got it into his head a while back that we ought to pool our resources and save the bees. Claimed their disappearances were part of some demonic plot to create food shortages—”

“Wasn’t us,” Crowley interrupted. “I don’t know anything about disappearing bees.”

“Well, that was his argument,” said Aziraphale. “Part of it, anyway. He had a whole presentation, with accompanying slides. It went on for months.”

“Sounds like some of ours,” Crowley muttered.

“That’s what I said,” Aziraphale said, leaning in conspiratorially. “When Michael realized he was only halfway through, she gave up and just sent him up the chain of command for someone else to deal with. Somehow, he made it all the way to the Metatron.”

“You’re kidding!”

“No, he did. And I guess bees didn’t feature prominently in the Great Plan, because in the end the Almighty did agree to save them.”

Crowley burst out laughing. The angel, who had been talking animatedly, suddenly looked alarmed. Maybe he had realized that he shouldn’t have been so comfortable talking to a demon. “That’s too good,” said Crowley, when the laughter had petered out. “What a legend. And you really tried to kill this guy? You must have known that wouldn’t end well.”

“Not me, personally,” Aziraphale muttered. To Crowley’s dismay, he went back to fidgeting. “Gabriel’s not normally like that. It all came out of nowhere, to be honest. If he had shown that much initiative in everything he did, he might have easily made archangel. He was a bit shortchanged by Michael—” He stopped, glancing at the sky as if worried that someone up there might have heard.

“Oh, go on,” Crowley prompted, grinning. “Who am I gonna tell?”

But the angel was already withdrawing into himself, replacing the barriers he had accidentally knocked over. “Of course,” he said, folding his hands in front of him, “she had her reasons.” He said no more on the subject.

Disappointed, Crowley turned back to the ducks. “I volunteered for this as well, in a way,” he said. “Riots in hell. Didn’t want to be there for that, obviously. Anyway, I wouldn’t have been any help.” He took a deep breath, wondering why he was admitting this to an angel. “To tell the truth, I never really got the hang of command. Beelzebub was the intimidating one. The mastermind. I always thought we should have just swapped places, and Beelz should have been the prince. I wouldn’t have minded getting sent here.”

He glanced at Aziraphale, wishing he hadn’t said so much. He’d never said so much to anyone, but something about the angel had just drawn it out of him. And now he would no doubt take full advantage of the opportunity to laugh at a prince of hell who didn’t know how to do his job. Crowley wouldn’t have blamed him. It was pretty laughable.

“Hm,” said Aziraphale, with an understanding nod. “Gabriel always seemed more suited to leadership, too. He has that sort of personality.”

Crowley felt the smile on his face only after it was too late to stop it. This one was full of surprises. “Never introduced myself,” he said, holding out a hand. “Crowley.” Why had he offered a handshake? It was too late to pull his hand back now, and an angel would never—

Aziraphale shook his hand with a fleeting smile and a nod. “Aziraphale. Well—You already knew that.”

Crowley blinked a few times, suddenly very glad for the cover of the dark glasses. Wishing the rest of his face was hidden as well, he forced himself to face the lake before he stared at the angel for too long. “You know,” he said thoughtfully, “Beelz wasn’t bad, for a demon. Only blackmailed me twice.” he shook his head. “Or maybe, wasn’t good for a demon. I don’t know. The adjectives get confusing. Anyway, as long as you’re looking for Gabriel’s side of the story, I wouldn’t mind hearing Beelzebub’s.”

Aziraphale looked at him, part grateful, part quizzical.

“We’d be like their lawyers,” Crowley went on, liking the idea more with each passing second.

The angel smiled in amusement. “Celestial defense attorneys.”

“Yeah,” said Crowley, grinning. “Though hell doesn’t have much of a law besides ‘spread evil’ and ‘get them before they get you.’ ‘Don’t lick the walls’ is another big one, I guess.”

“What?”

“Little demonic joke,” said Crowley, waving his hand. “Or maybe it’s not. I’ve never been sure.”

Across the lake, the ducks were squabbling over a sandwich someone had dropped. It was much too big for any of them to eat by themselves, but that didn’t stop them from trying. Crowley watched for a minute before flicking his fingers to make the bread break into smaller pieces. They had struggled over it for long enough.

“That’s assuming they’ll be willing to sit and talk to us,” Crowley added. “An angel and a demon immune to hellfire and holy water? What sort of precautions do you even take?”

The angel squirmed. “About that. I have…an idea, about how they might have pulled it off.” When he looked at Crowley, he seemed to be wrestling with some question. “Gabriel acted very strange at his, er, execution. He didn’t seem like himself. Did the demon also…?”

“I didn’t go to Beelzebub’s trial.” The whole thing had seemed a bit gruesome. Not his scene. But he couldn’t admit that, not even to this angel who, after five minutes of acquaintance, seemed to understand and accept far more about him than he’d thought anyone ever would.

Aziraphale swallowed. “Your side gave them a trial,” he said quietly.

Crowley nodded. “Yours didn’t?”

Aziraphale shook his head mournfully. “Sometimes I think—” He caught himself and swallowed whatever he had been about to say. “Well,” he said, getting to his feet, “We’ll be in touch.”

Crowley wanted to press the angel, to find out what it was that he was about to say. But he held himself back. “Have you got a phone?”

The angel blinked. “No, I haven’t—”

“Then how d’you expect to keep in touch?” He reached into his breast pocket, pulled out a smoky grey business card, and flicked it at Aziraphale between two fingers. “Address on there as well,” he added as the angel took it. “I went ahead and got an Earth apartment. Figured I’d be staying up here a while to keep an eye on Beelz.” He took a deep breath. “And will you, also…?”

“I—Yes, I expect I’ll be staying in the city as well,” said Aziraphale. Was Crowley imagining it, or was he a little flustered? “Though I haven’t yet—I mean, I don’t have—”

“Just ring me when you do,” said Crowley, with a little wave. “See you around, Aziraphale.”

“And you, Crowley.” The angel gave another little nod and a smile.

Crowley returned the smile, and let it linger even after the angel had turned to walk away. He could not have been gladder not to have met with Michael. This one was different. Crowley wouldn’t mind working with him. In fact, he was rather looking forward to it.


End file.
